Comment by aneutron | Hacker News Reader

Comment by aneutron | Hacker News Reader

Why are people jumping ship to lower quality services ? And I'm talking about unrecognizable brand names, because at least migrating to Gitlab or Bitbucket may be understandable in a way, but still an exageration in my opinion.

I was alive when Microsoft was evil and I don't want my stuff to stay in a Microsoft service. I moved my pulic repositories to GitLab today. It's slower and it doesn't looks as nice but it's ok.

I self host my private repositories, no need of a third party service for that.

By the way, Bitbucket looks a little better than GitLab but its usability is abysmal. I always have troubles finding the things I want in there.

GitLab runs on Microsoft Azure. :)

I don't mind, as I don't mind that (another famous example) StackOverflow runs on Windows. They use what's best for them. I don't use MicroSoft directly but with all the stuff that they sold it's impossible to stay strictly clear from them. Examples: Windows powered ATMs and supermarket cash counters.

GitLab was migrating to the Google Cloud Platform: https://about.gitlab.com/2018/04/05/gke-gitlab-integration/

I do not know whether this migration has finished.

More links:

- http://fortune.com/2016/11/14/gitlab-cloud-storage/

- https://venturebeat.com/2018/04/06/why-and-how-gitlab-abando...

Companies aren't evil, they are just a group of people, and so it stands to reason when the leaders of that group have changed then "the company" has changed too.

Also what exactly is so bad about MS owning Github? The amount of conspiracy theory on HN is incredible.

> Also what exactly is so bad about MS owning Github?

No idea. Especially compared to the other realistic options: Facebook or Google.

> The amount of conspiracy theory on HN is incredible.

If you think this is bad, I advice you to not investigate the mood down in /r/linux or other similar reddit-subs.

It's surprising that nobody blames Github for selling, they play an equal part in all this. Not to mention that their entire business model is about an acquisition so they had to end up somewhere to stay alive.

An evil company is usually a group of evil people. There's a small chance of incompetence and bad organization causing companies to behave inappropriately, but normally it's just a critical mass of various types of evil people: insensitive, criminal, fanatic, hypocritical, greedy...

I disagree. It's mostly because of apathy and incompetence. When you get to the size of Fortune 500 companies, most people in the organization are not world-class top tier talent and will behave as such. There will be malicious but are far fewer than what it looks like.

I'm not sure how useful this comment is in that terse form... I've heard many voicing opinions that now is a good opportunity to jump to the superior Gitlab for reasons like self hosting if not for future proofing.

Edit: OK, this was in response to your unedited comment

Why is now a good opportunity compared to any other time?

Because now github is owned by a company that was formerly very hostile to open source software, and this company is magically not.

Steve Ballmer is no longer CEO. Companies are run by people - they are not people.

And what makes you think 1) company culture is no longer a thing and 2) that microsoft won't swing back towards being openly hostile or worse, 'secretly hostile' towards open source software when someone else is at the healm?

I hope time will prove me wrong, but this acquisition is literally the 'embrace' phase of E3. Next comes the 'extend'.

Microsoft has shown themselves to be very pro-open-source in the last 5+ years. Just look at things like VS Code. Microsoft is just the Nickelback of software, its cool to hate on them for no real reason (any more).

Why would they acquire github just to turn on it and run it into the ground? You can do that if your users are locked-in or maybe you have a competing service but neither are the case here; there are numerous alternatives and it's pretty easy to switch, as we are already seeing. If they have anything but good intentions this would be just a giant waste of time/money.

I’m personally worried that they might do it unintentionally. They seem to be very good at mismanaging and fucking up all their mainstream products.

They did it with Skype. They don't have good but rather business minded intentions or how to make money from a product. This can change the product for the worse or at least for another audience (business users).

Lets rephrase that shall we "Why would they acquire Nokia just to turn on it and run it into the ground?"

It doesn't need malice but Microsoft have a talent for this kind of thing

The mobile hardware division of Nokia had been heading this way for a long time - I have no idea why they went through with that. Is it fair to say all Microsoft's attempts at hardware (except XBOX) have failed?

The other example would be the Kin phone. A feature complete working phone that Microsoft decided needed to be rewritten from scratch to use the Windows Mobile / Phone stack

It took 18 months and nearly $1B to rewrite only to find the market had moved on. Canned and written off

I can imagine a situation where Microsoft thinks that GitHub would benefit from being re-implemented using Microsoft tech. Rewriting in APS.net, using Microsoft Login, integration with Office 365. The whole enchilada :)

It would take years, cost billions and, at best, deliver exactly the same experience as GitHub today

Worse case would be that GitHub stagnates during the rewrite as the alternatives spend their time and money developing new features

People can decide who to work for. If they go to a company they probably like how it is when they join it, at least a little bit.

I was contacted by a recruiting firm for an interview in Microsoft, probably in the 90s or maybe in the early 2000s. I answered no thanks.

Of course they can, but this decision is based mostly on money. Most of the time, people would just pick the company that would offer them more.

Do you believe that on Mr Ballmer's last day he put the company culture into a box along with some desk plants and framed photos and walked out of the building with it?

Company culture doesn't transform within a few years.

I wouldn't say that they are low quality, but what really puzzles me is the timing of the switch, linked to a market event, which has no policy or technical consequences.

I had no problems working with MS products since DOS 5.0/Win 3.1 and never had any technical or privacy issues while using them as the tools that allow me to live normal life and do my job efficiently. GH is convenient and perfectly matches my needs (I'm hosting there few personal open-source projects and private repositories), so what's the point in moving anywhere?

>Why are people jumping ship

because at best (or actually worst?) MS will slowly boil you like that frog.

From people I spoke to everyone seems concerned with what might happen. It is possible nothing bad happens at all but people cannot trust MS after what happened to a lot of the companies they acquired in the past.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com