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Comment by bmelton | Hacker News Reader

Microsoft, love them or hate them, appear to have been turning over a new leaf for the past while. If trends are to be used as indicators, then it seems the trend is that more and more of Microsoft's projects are becoming more and more open, while it feels like Google is becoming more closed.

Yes, Microsoft still has closed source programs (Windows), and yes, Google still has open source programs (Android, Tensorflow), but the general feeling I'm getting from Google is shrinking away from a commitment to open source on practical grounds.

I don't know if I'm ready to say that I have more respect for Microsoft than Google at this point, but I definitely have more respect for Microsoft than I ever have, and that's the direct result of their recent efforts to embrace the developer community at large.

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Agreed, however, we shouldn’t fool ourselves into believing ms would put the wider software community’s needs before their shareholder profits.

The situation with GitHub has radically changed, it is no longer a neutral and independent project which exists solely to provide a service to entire developer community. It is now a tool to leverage more profits for one software company — a company who has proven they care much more about market dominance than the wider tech ecosystem.

I’m not trying to imply some forgone conclusion that GitHub is doomed or that ms will ruin it, but the entire purpose of the project is now completely different than when it was an independent company and we would be wise to keep this in mind.

I particularly think we should be watching and cautious to see what types of changes they try to leverage into git itself.

Perhaps I am a bit cynical, but why do you say Github "exist[ed] solely to provide a service to entire developer community"? They made money too.

The economics were aligned with the customers. The whole business model was based on paying for private services using the same great tooling that was available for open source projects. People developed familiarity with open source and naturally clamored for the same tooling within companies. It was a loss leader of sorts.

Now the economic incentives are different. This would be true if Google acquired Github or if Amazon or Facebook or Twitter or any other company acquired it. Since it's not a standalone company, the parent company optimizing for greatest comprehensive profits will make decisions that are not always optimal if GitHub were standalone.

I'm pretty sure that the economics were aligned with getting bought out by someone. Upselling people who used the free product was not making them profitable and they weren't on the path to profitable.

The GitHub story is complex. There was a time years ago when they were profitable: https://signalvnoise.com/posts/2486-bootstrapped-profitable-... They and Sidekiq were the poster children of bootstrapped profitable businesses around open source. Something very clearly changed (most likely raising a boatload from VC firms and the ensuing perils) that flipped the situation.

GitHub had thier first round of VC funding in 2012.

https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/github

GitHub was relatively independent in that hosting git repositories was the only product that it sold and it didn't clearly favor any sort of tech stack. Now, MS says that they will not remove any of the existing functionality, but their press release did hint that they would add features to make it easier to launch apps onto MS platforms like Azure.

> They made money too.

Sure, but it isn’t profit motive that I think we should be concerned about in this case. Its the entire space in which GitHub exists is now radically different. Until the buyout, they were an independent company who hosted software repos. Now they are owned by a company who has many many many different interests and ms has a tendency to use most of their various software projects to feed into their own proprietary ecosystem.

There are many ways this might be problematic, all of which are obviously just speculation. I’m just trying to say, an enormous part of the software ecosystem is currently in a really precarious spot and we might be wise to consider and work on some alternatives just to give ourselves some wiggle room should ms decide to behave in ways we’ve seen them behave so many times in the past.

"independent" is a bit strong. They've accepted money from Microsoft for some time.

I might be mistaken, so please, forgive me if I’m wrong, but I feel like you may be missing my overall point.

yeah i probably am. i haven't gone back to read it, yet, and it is like me to question minutia before i question the larger narrative.

Assuming for the sake of argument that they were acting wholly from benevolence anyway, that dynamic would have changed regardless of whether it was Microsoft or Google acquiring them.

The reason I point out the difference in vibe between the two companies is that while sure, there are definitely valid reasons to be skeptical here, I am leaning towards more optimism because it was Microsoft who made the acquisition and not Google.

Yeah I’m not sure any of the big tech empires purchasing GitHub would be necessarily better than the others. It would have been nice to see them bought by someone who we could consider neutral and someone who didn’t have such a long history of using products to leverage market dominance in other areas. But that’s not what happened :/

Im hopeful that ms stays out of it and let’s it remain it’s own entity but practically speaking I just really don’t see that happening.

Fortunately, acquisition of GitHub and the bread and butter income of todays's Microsoft (Office365) do not conflict. In fact, they probably can be brought together, usefully and economically, for Enterprise customers and Microsoft itself.

It could work well. We'll see how it goes. I am optimistic.

Microsoft just sponsored four of the live podcast at Apple's WWDC. Microsoft realizes that it has to appeal to developers wherever they are.

Yeah. That generally how you fool people you are a good person. You do stuff that appears to be good hearted. Companies do that too. Just like politicians.

I can't understand why people today lack the ability to see a scam.

Convincing other people you are doing good things when you in fact aren't is a scam.

Doing good things is not a scam.

if you do $10 of good things as a smoke screen for $11 of bad, then those good things aren’t good

you mean, if you do $10 of good things as a smoke screen for $11 of bad, then you are bad, not that the good things aren't in fact good

Right -- I don't care what Bill Gates' motives for donating all the money to charity that he donates, because I believe that the money he's donating is doing actual good.

Maybe he feels guilty for some of his actions as Microsoft CEO, maybe he doesn't. Maybe he's cheating on his wife, or doing some other nefarious deed -- but those charities still have that money, and they're still (probably) doing good work with it.

that’s not an example of a smoke screen, as i intended. there is an ordering requirement implied in my statement.

it’s necessary for the good to precede the bad in a way that demonstrates the good was to prevent the detection or objection to the subsequent bad.

using good deeds to atone for past transgressions is different in a way that is subtle.

I disagree. We're perfectly capable of judging an act on its own merits.

Orson Scott Card is a good author.

Orson Scott Card is a bigot, and I do not ever wish to give him any money, so I will not buy his books now that I know of his bigotry.

His bigotry doesn't cancel out his talent as an author, and while I might find that I don't enjoy reading his books any more as a result of what I know of him, that doesn't change what my opinion was before I found out about his bigotry.

A good act is a good act, even if it's surrounded by a dozen bad acts.

he didn’t use his talent as a smoke screen.

so those good deeds aren’t poisoned by the bigotry.

if you found out that he set out to make stellar art for the explicit purpose of softening people to his bigotry, then it would be a smoke screen.

Companies (and people) are not pure good or pure evil. It's always a mix.

I'm not thrilled with windows 10 ads, but typescript, chakra js engine, dot net core, and others are open source and being developed in the open on github - and that's pretty cool.

In my opinion Microsoft's open source projects are not a scam to trick people into liking them. They're part of a broad realization that projects run like this will see broader adoption and generally will be higher quality.

Companies don't have souls. They're not intrinsically good or bad, but they may act good or bad depending on the leadership team. When the leadership changes the company's behavior changes along with it.

Nadella's microsoft is not the same as Ballmer's and Gates's microsoft. In Gates' day windows licenses brought in the money, and linux and the web were the dominant threats to microsoft's revenue, completely explaining microsoft's behavior around 2000 that earned them their reputation.

Nadella's microsoft however is a cloud services company, with office 365 and azure bringing in an ever larger slice of the pie, and windows reduced to a single digit percentage of the revenue stream. Cloud services are built on open source. It makes complete financial sense for microsoft to be a strong open source backer now.

Good or bad being relative. All companies are bad if you are the thing they consider expendable to make profit. All companies are good if you are a shareholder receiving profits.

Business has parted with ethics a long time ago. Many don't even pay it lip service putting bribes as line items on budgets.

> Companies don't have souls

Careful there. There is no consensus that humans do have souls. Personality might have been a better word to pick, since what you are describing better fits the idea of personality, but that is dangerous as well.

But regardless of the specific term we want that separates individuals from companies, there is no denying that companies are more then the sum of the individuals they are made of. Group psyche has been proven to prevail through replacement of every member. Though one should not jump to the opposite conclusion either—that companies’s behavior remains static through a change in leadership.

Let us know when scientists tell us we got a soul :) That will never happen. Nor because it's not true, we do (i think so anyway) but because it's not something you can find by digging around in the body. By definition, the soul is not physical.

> Careful there. There is no consensus that humans do have souls.

"Soul" doesn't have to mean "immortal ghost." Humans have souls tautologically; the word is one way of trying to get at something about our experience with ourselves and others. Personality doesn't quite cover it, psyche might be closer, but soul has the depth.

That said, I agree with the premise that human organizations can have a culture that starts to border if not overlap conceptually with "soul."

GitHub never made a profit. So eventually someone would have bought it. I’m just happy it is not Oracle.

> Yeah. That generally how you fool people you are a good person. You do stuff that appears to be good hearted. Companies do that too. Just like politicians.

Companies aren't people though; they're made up of people.

So, where you could make the argument that it's very difficult for people to change, the people who make up a large company change everyday.

There are likely many "good" and "bad" people in a given company for any definition of good and bad. I'm sure the people at any sufficiently large company don't even agree on what is good or bad.

Have you worked inside a company and been any form of leader? There is a culture in all large companies to make things appear a certain way, internally and publicly, while people in charge carry out whatever they are told from their bosses.

Microsoft employees may also believe they are now becoming a nicer company. It would make sense to have that kind of internal communication, and it increases morale and productivity of you believe your work is positive.

>There is a culture in all large companies to make things appear a certain way, internally and publicly, while people in charge carry out whatever they are told from their bosses.

Every large company manages public relations. That does not mean that they manage public relations dishonestly.If a company wants to turn their business model around, even if only out of self-interest, that is likely going to be accompanied by a PR effort.

There is no reason to assume malicious intent behind every PR-campaign because no institution benefits from lying out of principle.

And in the case of Microsoft, this turn-around seems reasonable. Their old, proprietary model isn't making them that much money any more. They're trying to be a developer-friendly platform.

Are you implying the hidden data sharing built into Windows is unethical?

https://www.engadget.com/2017/04/05/microsoft-explains-windo...

I'm not mistaken on their motives, but nor do I believe that anybody (or any company) is entirely one thing or the other.

On net though, Microsoft appears to be doing more things that I like, but if we're being pragmatic, I should like the things I determine to be 'good' whether or not they are also doing things I consider to be 'bad' -- but on the whole, if they're doing things I like just to make me more likely to contribute to their code, or work for them, or be a customer, then they're still doing more things that I like, scam or not.

>I can't understand why people today lack the ability to see a scam.

While I know that for some people in SV this may come as a shock but not every company is a ploy to use investor's money to pay yourself a fat salary for a year or two before declaring that grubhub for toilet paper is not a sustainable business model, laying off everyone and selling everything you scraped from your users cell phones to whoever will do the most harm with it.

Some companies actually optimize for making a sustainable profit by taking other people's money in exchange for delivering goods and services.

Just not Microsoft, which is the topic here.

> You do stuff that appears to be good hearted.

I agree with you except for the section above. I don't know that Microsoft has done anything remarkably "good". Today's Microsoft is centered around their surveillance, keylogging Operating System. It's centered around their deceptive & litigious forced upgrades to Windows 10.

Someone mentioned a piece of software called 'Yammer' (a freemium enterprise social networking service) a few days ago that I'm not familiar with. When I looked into it, I found that Microsoft had acquired Yammer in 2012 for US$1.2 billion.[0]

This is the current result of that acquisition: "The new integrations have implications for the way Microsoft sells Yammer. Microsoft is encouraging customers to migrate to its Office 365 plans. Effectively Microsoft will stop selling Yammer as a standalone service."[1]

I'm sure there are many more modern day examples. I'll have to delve back into Microsoft land to find out (MS refugee for a few years now after jumping ship to the privacy-respecting Linux).

To me, there is little difference between the Microsoft of 20 years ago and the Microsoft today. In many ways, with the addition of user-hostile surveillance and data-hording, Microsoft is far worse than they've ever been.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yammer

[1] https://venturebeat.com/2016/09/26/microsoft-is-killing-yamm...

> I don't know if I'm ready to say that I have more respect for Microsoft than Google at this point, but I definitely have more respect for Microsoft than I ever have

You expressed it beautifully.

While I'm not a fan yet, I think Microsoft is much more invested in its developer and cloud products than Google. After all, most of Google's revenue still comes from ads.

Google’s main products always were and will be closed source they do have a lot of open source projects but so always has Microsoft especially in the academic scene they just weren’t as prolific and thus impactful.

But essentially the entire Google suite and all their commercial apps and services are close source.

I've been really confused about the reaction around this. It feels like so many people are just waiting to find out how this is a scam, like this is still the same Microsoft. "Oooh, just you wait, they're tricking you with their PR".

There's just been too many things that I would never think would come to pass to think that opinion is fair, too many different faces. MS seems to have put more effort into going where the developers and customers are instead of trying to wrangle them in.

They make more money and business if they become developer friendly period. If they step back from that they know they will lose out for no true benefit! Microsoft knows this.

Strange times, indeed.

This feels a bit like IBM in the 90's. People have been predicting for 20 years that an Old Microsoft would look a lot like IBM.

I just hope Microsoft doesn't inflict the moral equivalent of XSLT, XPath, and XML-RPC proxies on us.

Ha. I was just talking to a coworker today about using XSLT, unfortunately.

Balmer times were the strange times. We're in good times now.

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