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Comment by GiorgioG | Hacker News Reader

I’m not entirely sure why people are freaking out at this point. This is not the Microsoft of the 90s. How many of these folks are happy to use VSCode and then turn around and panic at this acquisition?

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> not the Microsoft of the 90s

Windows 10 has a lot of telemetry that's still difficult to turn off. (Which will be interesting with the GDPR). They've started pushing ads through their OS/platform as well.

Sure MS has gone a ways out into the OSS world, they have docker containers for SQL Server, .NET Core is open source and runs on Linux, etc. They've made some headway, but I can still understand why people have concerns.

It's like when Facebook bought Oculus.

I'm guessing the people using vscode aren't the ones "freaking out", but I could be wrong.

What’s going to happen to atom? Rip, long live vsc? ;/

The demise of Skype was not in the 90s. There are reasons to be vary of the news, although the immediate panic is unaccounted for.

Indeed, nor was LinkedIn, Yammer etc... there is no ‘new’ Microsoft - that’s the same old marketing spin they use every decade to try and make themselves seem ‘hip’ by blaming previous employees rather than changing their ugly business model and lack of ethics.

Well, they have "improved" Linkedin and Skype to the point that usability has gone way down, and resource use way up. It's easy to extrapolate and expect the same with github.

Fortunately we mostly use the repos, not any of the other features, so migrating away will be easy if needed.

I use VSCode on Arch Linux and recommend it to others over Atom and such mainly because MS knows how to build dev-tools.

Now, there is always a limit you want a company to get under your skin.

Example where MS F-ed it up are: LinkedIn, Yammer, Skype, Nokia, Code Project, CodePlex, and many more, etc, including they sent their Trojan Horse to take over Yahoo but did not work out because some people actually cared. One of the best projects is going to die. Github. MS is pushing VS/TFS on your throat. Wait and see.

This is in their DNA, they don't know open source, they don't understand it. For that to work they would have to fire 90% of the red-mond ppl and blood sucking consulting companies around them and their top managers would have to start caring about tech not their bonuses and performance numbers at the end of 3 months sprint. They care about their mortgages and that next sports car. THERE is no open source that they understand. Every single piece of open source they built so far that had some success like TypeScript is still geared to pull you back into Windows eco-system, in a very subtle way.

They know Outlook, TFS/Visual Studio, CRM. Done. That is the future for Github. This happened and will happen, that is MS.

And for them to throw this "acquisition" up there to hit the fan is a VERY BAD and SAD move.

Also there is a reason WHY MS became platinum on Linux - they fucked-up windows too and they ran out of options.

I'd imagine those "freaking out" are at some mid-point, between trusting companies enough to not screw things up, and being so distrusting that they'd never rely on such services in the first place.

You seem to be at the trusting end, which is fine; personally, I'm at the distrusting end, so the reason I'm not freaking is that GitHub (AKA BitKeeper 2.0) could go up in flames and all I'd lose is a free mirror.

PS: I've never used VSCode; I avoid it partly because of its connection to Microsoft, but mostly because I'm very happy in Emacs :)

People like to be dramatic. This is good though, I'd like to see a bit more variety and support for other git services.

That is actually a very good otucome, if it actually happens.

Microsoft is still the same, believe me. I've visited their HQ in .ch recently and even they confirmed it internally.

So when you visited their HQ recently, they told you that they are the same as they were in the 90's?

I actually visited, because we were invited to talk about a partnership in the area of Open Source. While the talk was certainly interesting, I was asking my contact directly, how the situation is internally. And while he is very much into Open Source and trying to push it (within and for Microsoft), he made it very clear that this is only a tiny portion of Microsoft and that the mindset of 90%+ of Microsoft is still the old one, trying to get rid of your competitors.

Not to mention the fact that there hasn't been any kind of official announcement from either party yet.

The Internet does, what it does best nowadays: freaking out for 1 or at maximum 2 days about a single topic.

Looking forward to the next shitstorm on Wednesday or Thursday.

Have you _seen_ what Skype has become?

MS may not be dreadful across the board any more, correct, but they absolutely have it in them to wreck a perfectly serviceable product once acquired.

You are right — this MS will instead mine data the hell out of your repositories and spam you (LinkedIn), and that’s only the best scanerio. Of course, they acquire GitHub to upsale Azure and integrate with LinkedIn. They will have a very complete profile of you, as a developer.

There's a huge difference between VSCode and code repository. Switching out of VSCode requires pretty much no effort compared to code repository. Also, I think we'd have seen a similar outrage and panic if it was Google instead of Microsoft.

Panic because "look what happened to Skype!" even though nobody here has used Skype.

> even though nobody here has used Skype

Where did you get this idea from? A lot of us used the old, 2.x Skype.

exaggeration

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