You aren't the only one. Most users are too young to understand how predatory Microsoft has always been. Can't wait for the "npm won't publish my package because it circumvents something in Windows" or whatever. Give it time.
And we're yet to hear of any negative impact of their Github acquisition (afaik - correct me if wrong).
What you are talking about is Right-wing politics, even if they are extremely far to the left of your -and the majority of peoples political view -in the USA. Both parties in the US are on the right. This isn't Reddit where the state of US politics is the default norm when it differs from most of planet earth. Though HN is quickly getting there.
ICE are the goons operating everywhere (i. e. not tied to the border) rounding up "suspected illegal immigrants".
Because it isn't exactly hard to find illegal immigrants, and their charter allows them to control people without objective cause, ICE gets to arbitrarily decide whom to harass.
It's the real-life version of the perennial fear of civil libertarians that too many criminal laws will just lead to any one of us being arrested whenever it happens to be convenient for whoever is currently in power.
It isn't going to end illegal immigration, nor curtail it to any significant degree. It just serves to keep a large segment of the people who see every day in a constant state of fear, unable to (for example) seek protection from crime or exploitation for fear of being deported.
As for the rest of your comment, this is the far-left extremist position that I cited in my first post. There's no good faith discussion to be had here.
No, it's the enforcement arm for immigration and customs, the former of which is people who are living in the US despite not being US citizens. Enforcement of people (and goods) crossing the border is the Border Patrol and it's parent organization Customs and Border Protection.
There's not much controversy over the people who cross illegally but stay temporarily and close to the border. Those are just traffickers and cartels.
https://www.aclu.org/issues/immigrants-rights/ice-and-border...
Also detainment centers are not cages but fenced areas with free movement inside where people receive food, shelter, healthcare, entertainment, schooling and legal services paid for by US taxpayers while their cases are processed. Detainees are free to deport themselves at any time. This is more accommodating than pretty much every other developed nation.
These are well-documented facts that have been widely reported on in the mass media. You can find links to specific articles on my blog in the recent article about Microsoft and GitHub, if you wish to learn specifics.
The kids are in there right now, as I write to you.
Whether or not Microsoft's provisioning of services to the government is "legal" or not is not particularly relevant to the thread, but it is interesting that you bring it up, presumably as a defense of their behavior.
Again: This is not a partisan thing. At all. Your attempt to reduce it to such is inaccurate (and, tbqf, off-topic for the thread about Microsoft-the-corporation, as well as off-topic for HN).
I'm a naturalized immigrant. I've been in far worse places than America. I suggest you visit CBP and ICE. Talk to the agents. Visit the border. See the shelters. View the damage done by criminals who prey on these people and find out how much the agents do to help them while risking their lives fighting cartels and traffickers.
Like I said, America is far softer with borders than other nations. Crossing illegally brings enforcement and penalties. I'm not sure why this is so controversial, or why protest against govt organizations is done by proxy of software companies.
The fact that it is open source and popular is not sufficient on its own. It had to be forked (vscodium) to show basic respect for the user’s privacy and system resources.
So it "furthers my intended point".
It’s builds released by Microsoft that have all of their specific stuff added in.
> This is not a fork. This is a repository of scripts to automatically build Microsoft's `vscode` repository into freely-licensed binaries with a community-driven default configuration.
This is such an extreme & pretentious viewpoint. Microsoft knowing that I have VS Code installed & getting a report when it crashes is not in mine, or really any normal developer's threat landscape.
Those are great until they're not. It's why it's called "bait and switch".
> And we're yet to hear of any negative impact of their Github acquisition (afaik - correct me if wrong).
ANY?! Heh, do a quick search just on HN and you'll find it pretty quickly.
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17221640
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17221656
> I'm legitimately curious as my use of GitHub hasn't led me to notice any change
Nor I. That's not that point.
For the record, I think Microsoft has done wonderfully for the dev community in the last 10 years. I don't see any reason that they are going to "f it up", but big businesses get desperate when environments change and profits get impacted (look no further than what Oracle is doing). Microsoft is not immune to that.
Next you'll call them Micro$oft. Come on now.
If it does micro$oft will just buy the world out from under them.
Assume the best all you like. Microsoft are spying on you and can lock you out of their ecosystem for any reason. When that ecosystem includes critical public infrastructure, there is a problem.
The only "sane" response to this is to smile at the MS employees who tell you how much they love Open Source and to use absolutely any other platform.
I understand the concern about MS business practices, but I don't think it applies to environment where transactions (as in, importing someone's package or submitting a pull request to it) don't involve any contracts or money.