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Comment by lalos | Hacker News Reader

I don't understand why the people have this huge team mentality. If this team does that, it wrong, if another does it it is ok. Google cancelled Google Code with no backlash, or at least not to this level. Microsoft is trying to save a vital company in the open source community that didn't even have a CEO or any path to profitability and people react like they are going to ban all projects that are not C#. Not only in tech, but elsewhere I see a trend of just following a herd mentality instead of judging every action by it's own weight or at least let it play out. Of course, if you are afraid have a plan B or backup what ever you see fit but we need more critical thinking in our daily lives.

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> Microsoft is trying to save a vital company...

So Microsoft is in the "company saving" business now? This couldn't be farther from the truth. They bought Github not to save it, but to use it as a resource for whatever goals they deem appropriate. And I really doubt Microsoft's goals align with open source well.

https://www.investopedia.com/terms/g/goodwill.asp

Either goodwill, a cheap deal since they were about to fold, gain trust for people to use Azure Linux or Azure open source platform, etc. I have no idea, but goodwill is an option.

$7 billion in stock isn't "about to fold" money.

Which big corporate's is? If Microsoft can't be trusted neither Google, Facebook,IBM or Oracle for that matter. They could ruin or shut it down if it's not aligning with their goal which is to make money.

SMH. I used to work for Nat at Xamarin before it was acquired by MSFT. GitHub and Xamarin have had a long and deep relationship going back to at least 2012 (that I’m aware of anyway).

Xamarin was run on GitHub. We never used any other version control system. GitHub used Xamarin extensively as well. There were a lot of overlapping social graphs between the engineers of both as well.

Miguel and Nat both helped to make F/OSS and Linux what it is today—thank them if you like GNOME. Nat represents MSFT in this deal, and that’s great news for F/OSS enthusiasts everywhere.

Nat and Scott Guthrie aren’t responsible for the “sins of their fathers.” Time to move on from the Microsoft hating. That era has been over for a while.

Yesterday, I only had to worry about storing my data on GitHub if I was in direct competition with them on the integrated SCM business. Any other code wasn't in opposition to their interests. We, generally, were welcome.

Today my code on GitHub is in competition with the myriad projects that Microsoft publishes. And even if I stick with Windows coding, they too can and will incorporate it into their stack.

Tl;Dr. Doing stuff on GitHub is directly competing with Microsoft's own business.

That's a fair concern, and one they now will now have to adequately address in order to keep users content.

But unless you are AWS or Google Cloud Platform, Microsoft isn't competing with you. They may have similar products/services out there at some level, but these days, if it's not driving a lot of Azure adoption/retention then it's not something Microsoft is really going to compete against. That even goes for Windows. Microsoft is putting increasing amounts of money into the Linux ecosystem these days as well.

> Time to move on from the Microsoft hating. That era has been over for a while.

I'll consider it when they allow me turn off telemetry in Windows 10.

>Miguel and Nat both helped to make F/OSS and Linux what it is today—thank them if you like GNOME.

Mfw https://youtu.be/9UIiSz5WvRk

Please tell me you are trolling people. You can't seriously believe what you are writing here. Microsoft is an ugly company with ugly business practices and they are absolutely not trying to save anybody.

Have you been paying attention to Microsoft over the past few years? They have an ugly past, but they are a different company now. I actually think this is a good thing for the community. I for one am sticking with GitHub.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embrace,_extend,_and_extinguis...

Those who forget the past are condemned to repeat it - George Santayana

Microsoft lost all goodwill a long time ago, and they'll never get it back.

If they lost it all "a long time ago" is there a new cohort of developers who just weren't around to see it happen. Most of the references on that page are from ~2002, so kids who were six then are out of college now.

If people choose to judge them by a different time scale than you, their conclusions seem pretty justified.

They are so different, that even thought they keep the same practices and goals from always, some people say they're a different company now!

> they are a different company now

To name a some of their recent misbehavior: Windows 10 ads and telemetry, Skype, GPL license violation (ie still actively working against FOSS)

To me MS keeps proving they are still exactly the same company they've always been. They tend to be better at hiding it from public, I have to give them that.

> GPL license violation

Context?

Agreed. Forced telemetry is unforgivably unethical. There absolutely must be a way to opt out.

It's going to take a hell of a lot more actual honest-to-goodness support and good actions before I'm willing to trust them. I remember the browser wars, kerberos, samba, hard drive compression, their acquisitions they ground into the mud, windows 10 spyware, and more.

It's the ol "Embrace Extend and Extinguish". I'll give it 5 years before I trust them. They'll likely show their usual colors soon enough.

Just remember what's going on around Win10. Toxicity levels are all-time high. No decline in anti-customer thinking

Could you expand on what you're saying here? How are they ugly? What previous acquisitions in this realm have they screwed over?

I'd love to educate myself further, but need more details.

I want people to judge by themselves. You can argue that yes, they have made some mistakes and probably bad practices like all companies. Try to get out of the tech bubble, companies in the world run on Excel. That alone has a huge impact on society. Not everything is black and white. I'm just a fan of critical thinking and not herd mentality not of Microsoft. I'm criticizing the reaction of all this.

This is an altruistic move on Microsoft's part? Puhleaze. And Google routinely gets beaten up for killing projects, it's just that nobody used Google Code.

I will have to disagree with that, back in the day I remember using more Google Code than Github. Maybe I was more into fringe projects that were not big enough and on Github, but in my personal experience the pain was felt when we lost a bunch of issues and documentation of the platform and not the code itself or the binaries. Plus, this seems like a strategy of Microsoft to win some brownie points in the open source community unless they see a huge money making opportunity that I'm not seeing.

GitHub license was changed a year or so ago, allowing an unlimited license to use. I took down my personal repos when they announced (quietly) that. I saw the HN post about it. Lot of people just didn't seem to care much.

I'm no lawyer, but wouldn't that mean now Microsoft has an unlimited license of all code uploaded to GitHub? That doesn't seem, ehh, good?

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13597340

Are you a lawyer? Didn't think so. "A lot of people" just read it for what it is which is legally protecting themselves while they are actively processing your code to syntax highlight it, display diffs, calculate stats etc. And these a lot of people said as much in the thread.

And the GPL(2,3), and many other libre-based open source licneses is perfectly well within the scope to do exactly those things. They don't need a forever world license that exempts them from anything and everything forever.

And naw shit. I said I wasn't a lawyer. But I can read. It doesn't take someone with a JD to read a term that looks pretty suspicious.

> Not only in tech, but elsewhere I see a trend of just following a herd mentality instead of judging every action by it's own weight or at least let it play out.

It's a consequence of hooking up all world's information before people understand how to safely digest it. It will fix itself if we can find an equilibrium before we all destroy each other.

Google did face backlash and it wasn't to this level because its use wasn't nearly as ubiquitous

Or you know - use BitBucket that allows unlimited number of private repos for free afaik.

I love competition and choice, I'm not even a fan of Github but I see their importance in the game. I'm criticizing herd mentality and something bigger than where you host a repo. I'm asking for critical thinking and that is it.

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