I applaud Microsoft for the Sponsor program. We need new ways of monetizing open source, and this is a step in the right direction.

However, the article itself mentions this program, a smaller contributor and dependencies feature and a planned feature list as being signs of a major turning point for GitHub. It's a bit too congratulatory of Microsoft and reads more like an advert than a genuine piece, though I'm sure the author meant well.

> As someone who contributes to open source software, I'm excited for these changes.

I'm curious, if you're passionate about open source, why would you feel excited for changes on one of the most popular closed source websites on the Internet? I like the direction Microsoft has been taking in the past few years regarding F/LOSS, but I think we should be cautiously optimistic about GitHub, while continuing to migrate away towards alternative open platforms.

Personally I've been using a self-hosted instance of Gitea[0] for many months now (and Gogs before that), and it's been working great as a private GitHub alternative.

I'll be excited when most of the world's developers share code and knowledge (looking at you, SO) on open source platforms.

[0]: https://gitea.io/