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Comment by zulrah | Hacker News Reader

So you tell that people trust private company which was loosing money since the creation better than Microsoft with all of its reputation at stake?

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Yes. Financial stability and conflict of interest are two orthogonal issues.

The worst case scenario with Github closing the door, assuming no heads up, is that you'd lose your issues and PR. You have your git history on a bunch of machines (your devs + you should really have a dedicated backup).

The worst case scenario with Microsoft having visibility of your "closed" source code is that they take a peek at it and implement a better faster more integrated version of them in their own product competing with you, or heck even copy/paste your code. What can you do about it? How could you prove it? Remember, they can afford orders of magnitude more number of lawyer hours than you.

Is it unfair that I keep thinking of the SCO–Linux dispute at the moment?

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SCO%E2%80%93Linux_disputes#Mic...

yes :)

That's the overarching style of business that I associate with the Microsoft brand

That's comparing oranges with a monkey. How do they relate?

Yes. 100% yes. Microsoft didn't care about their reputation for a long time. They currently do, at least a little, but that could change back.

Github was losing money, but that's pretty typical for SaaS businesses. I have no reason to think they couldn't have gotten to break-even. And if the can't get to break even, I have no reason to think Microsoft will subsidize them indefinitely.

I still think Microsoft had the lion share of the programmers mind with Virtual Studio? I am guessing it really has more to do with emotional response to the name MS then anything MS has done in the past 5 years.

I use Bit Bucket because I knew they were making money and were solvent and I knew GitHub was just waiting for a big pay day. BOY was I wrong with the timing and the amount.

> And if the can't get to break even, I have no reason to think Microsoft will subsidize them indefinitely.

This fits perfectly with their developer system with Virtual Studio, VS Code and Azure. I can't see how this isn't a great buy for them and their ecco-system.

That's not just a scummy breach of trust though, that's a blatantly illegal breach of trust. Source code is a trade secret. Copying it without permission is corporate espionage. People would go to jail if they tried. You are asserting that Microsoft's intentions are criminal.

I'm 100% sure that this is not their intention... But can you guarantee that this is not going to happen in the future?

All it takes is one rogue employee, and it could have devastating irreversible effects on a small startup.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/J%C3%A9r%C3%B4me_Kerviel#Unaut...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enron

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nick_Leeson#Downfall

What's stopping a Github or Gitlab or Atlassian employee from going rogue? That's not an MS specific problem.

Did you reply to the wrong comment? Because I don't think I am asserting anything like that.

Of course, Microsoft was famous for their dirty pool tactics in the past, so it's not irrational to worry that they'd return to them. E.g.: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Microsoft_litigation#Private

În a word, YES. Profitability <> quality.

I would argue that the case here is quite the opposite.

Github is loved for a variety of reasons, small & large decisions that are influenced by how profit-oriented the company is. And how willing they are to annoy their users to squeeze some more "profit" and/or data out of them.

It would seem Github had $7.5B at stake.

What's the evidence that Github was loosing money? Their first (and only, AFAIK) round was with Andreesen Horowitz for $100 million, many years after they had already become the go-to host for open source projects. Before that round the company was bootstrapped with personal funds.

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