Hacker News Reader

Comment by giancarlostoro | Hacker News Reader

I'm glad they're doing this. If anything the only ones misbehaving are the skeptics making claims they'll likely be disproved over. Also has been noted if they had issues with this happening they should of never used GitHub to begin with. I guess devs are religious about git hosting platforms aside from text editors and programming languages.

View on HN

> If anything the only ones misbehaving are the skeptics

Well, it's not like the skeptics' skepticism is not unfounded. Microsoft has a long, bloody history when it comes to open source software and this "don't worry about the past, trust us, we'll be different this time" position by Microsoft isn't enough to convince us.

I could be convinced, but it will take a LOT of time and good behavior by microsoft. Action speak louder than words. There has been nothing but words up to this point.

> There has been nothing but words up to this point.

I get your point, but come on, there have been a lot of 'actions' over the last couple of years. This only detracts from your argument. We've had .NET Core, visual studio code, the improvements on Git, WSL and more.

None of those are meaningful contributions to existing platforms/projects that MS does not own outright. They're throwing code of the wall. MS's contributions to git are very light.

Edit: clarify my point.

> But one could argue that those contributions to git are just to further MS's interests.

Of course they are! Everything a corporation does is to further its own interests. Most (large) companies don't contribute to open source out of the goodness of their hearts.

> Everything a corporation does is to further its own interests.

This is a common misconception. It's a close cousin of the "increase shareholder value" school of thought, which has widely (and correctly) been called "the world's dumbest idea": https://www.google.com/search?q=the+world's+dumbest+idea

We exist in a complex society. It is everybody's job to maintain that society. We do that through things like voting and paying taxes. But also through making the world better directly. Companies that only do things they perceive to be in their immediate pecuniary interest are essentially parasitic. And, at least sometimes, are rightly shunned for their self-centered behavior.

If Microsoft is trying to grow up and be a good corporate citizen, I applaud them. But if they are, as you say, only putting on a mask of neighborliness because that's their plan of the moment to fill their pockets, then there's no reason to welcome or trust them.

If Microsoft's goal is to become a better corporate citizen, isn't anything they do to progress on that goal "furthering their own interests"?

There's a difference between putting on a mask of citizenship because it's profitable and actually caring about the world beyond the size of one's wallet. Confusing the two requires confusing the meaning of "their own interests".

Is there, though? Maybe I'm just cynical, but I don't believe in the idea of "trusting" a corporation at all, because their default behavior (especially for larger companies) is to only care about the bottom line. Once you accept that everything a company does is for their own benefit (even if their actions happen to also benefit others) and learn to take each action at face value, I find it easier to evaluate the consequences of those actions.

The idea of trusting an entity that is designed to try to take your money seems silly and futile to me.

Your argument here is tautological. I'm not saying that one should never use that analytical model, just that there are other ways to do things.

Companies don't act on their own or have beliefs. Only the people that make them up do. The company does need to turn enough profit to sustain itself, but beyond that, it's in large part up to the people who make it up. One of the thorniest problems in investing, for example, is the principle-agent problem, where people act in their own interests.

In America, that's mainly thought about as CEOs and executives serving themselves, not investors. But that's a cultural thing. In Gemany, companies are much more focused on all sorts of stakeholders. That's also often true in America with small and medium businesses, especially ones that are family owned.

Companies are hopefully designed to do whatever the stakeholders want them to do. Sometimes that's serving somebody's rapacious greed. Sometimes it isn't.

But someone that acts only in their own interests is not trustable. You give trust to people as they demonstrate that they are concerned about your interests. Thus far, I've seen zero evidence that Microsoft has genuine concern for anyone else's interests. And they've had a history of acting against other's interest in a stifling and illegal way. I don't trust them.

As opposed to every other large company? All companies are only concerned with their own interests.

Which, one could say, is what open source is all about right? Get people or organisations motivated to improve upon code and share this with the rest of the community so they can reap the rewards as well. No one expects anyone to do stuff only for the greater good. The greater good is the best result of open source, but it isn't the motivation.

MS is contributing to Electron. They benefit, but so does the wider community. This is generally how OSS works.

https://www.linuxfoundation.org/membership/members/

Microsoft has had a vested interest in Git and Open-Source for a while now.

Is the Open Invention Network still a thing? MS still hasn't joined, and is still using patents as a weapon, apparently.

https://www.infoworld.com/article/3042699/open-source-tools/...

Doesn't the OIN secretly sell some of its patents to non-members and non-licensees? Sounds very strategic for the companies involved and this can lead to some serious consequences for any company who is targeted by an OIN patent.

any sources for this?

The linux foundation is nothing better than a PR front, they have members like Allwinner and VMWare who straight up refuse to stop violating the GPL license of the linux kernel, and face no consequences.

The Linux Foundation is a joke organization that companies use to push their own agendas in the name of "linux and open source", when in reality very few members actually care about it. It's a 'badge of honor', nothing more.

If you need further proof, observe that Oracle is on the list. There's not a company on Earth more hostile to FLOSS than Oracle. And yet there they are, and a "platinum" member at that. Lol.

Not blindly trusting Microsoft is "misbehaving" now? Were the cryptographers who refused to trust the NSA "misbehaving" too?

This is a serious question. How old are you? I'm wondering if you were a developer during the 1990s when MS was at its worst. I was and I still harbor deep hatred for all things MS. I wonder if the rest of the "skeptics" are coming from the same time period and those of you who are saying our concerns are unfounded are from a younger generation.

I'm not the person you're responding to, but I am turning 40 this year. I was also around for the terror that was Microsoft in the 90s when they were competing with Oracle for "company most desperately trying to kill open source".

I had a similar deep hatred for MS.

In the 00s I spent time as a video game developer and I was forced to use MS tools. And honestly, their developer tools were pretty good. Although I still didn't trust them, I respected them (or at least certain divisions within MS).

In the 10s, I've been mostly doing web stuff. Over the last couple of years I've started using VS Code, and it's actually a great editor and MS seems committed to it and to contributing to some other open source projects.

MS does not strike me as anywhere near the same company they were in the 90s as Gates transitioned out and Ballmer took over. Nadella seems to have a vision for MS that's much more in line with what developers actually want. (The irony of Ballmer's "DEVELOPERS! DEVELOPERS! DEVELOPERS!" is palpable.)

I wouldn't consider myself an MS fan, but I also don't view them as the devil they were then. I'm not totally sure what this means for github yet, but I am willing to wait and see before I grab my pitchfork.

>The irony of Ballmer's "DEVELOPERS! DEVELOPERS! DEVELOPERS!" is palpable.

Well guess what? They just bought exactly that.

Development on the MS side was just fine in the 90s for many people. If you were an open source developer in the 90s, maybe not, but then again, OSS in the 90s was pretty broken for _everyone_.

> if they had issues with this happening they should of never used GitHub to begin with.

I think it's reasonable to say that people understood that there were tradeoffs in hosting code on a site like github. Since it had become a popular site, the gains from the network effect outweighed the more theoretical risks, at least for the short term...

Then they should own up to that decision and realize that what they did not only helped github to be so dominant but it also actively worked against viable alternatives.

Choose more carefully next time? Maybe firefox instead of chrome? etc.

>likely be disproved over

I wouldnt say 'likely' this is M$ we are talking about.

And I used to be a Microsoft fanboy.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com