Comment by brudgers | Hacker News Reader

Comment by brudgers | Hacker News Reader

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I've been listening my way through the archive of Scott Hanselman's hanselminutes podcasts. Microsoft has been striving to be on the right side of history in regard to open source for five or six years. It's all out in the open.

Moving to Github is simply developer friendly.

Don't misunderstand me. Microsoft's products compete with open source software in the marketplace for developer mindshare and I am not suggesting that this is not a business decision. Being on Github helps the company iterate quickly rather than on the multiyear cycles that were standard when software came in a box.

Will Microsoft buy Github?

Only if Github is selling.

And there was value for Microsoft. There isn't amazing technology, there. There's a huge liability for litigation hosting just anyone's content that comes with Microsoft size pockets, and Git, being distributed would allow an angry community to set up their own Son of Github if Microsoft took control and acted improperly.

Incidentally, WiX has been on SourceForge since 2006. There's been nary a rumor of a deal there.

"Only if Github is selling."

Everyone is selling, for the right number of billions.

"We are excited about this new stage, because we are better positioned to ..."

a16z is their lead investor. Which presumptuously means there is definitely a selling price and Microsoft definitely has cash.

A number of big players have the cash...Apple, Google, Oracle. So do sovereign investment funds and Berkshire-Hathaway. Other than FUD, there's nothing pointing to Microsoft and Google makes far more extensive use of Github:

https://github.com/google

I like the idea that speculation Microsoft may buy github can only be FUD and not simply speculation.

Even though Microsoft have embraced open source, they are not happy about the GPL license, and have actively replaced GPL code in their previous takeovers.

[IANAL]

My impression is that GPL (or another copyleft style licence) would create incompatibilities with the business models of many of their customers. Taking contributions would also be problematic since Microsoft may wish to dogfood their opensource for proprietary products.

For better or worse many of their products incorporate licensed technology from other companies under terms incompatible with GPL. So GPL's strong terms don't seem a viable and reasoned alternative.

GPL might be seen as a strong option for companies whose business is built around dual licensing their technology and when all that technology was built in house or licenced under different less stringent terms.

This. GPL is just really really hard to work around if you're selling non-SAAS products. In general, it's not something you try to do if you have any alternative. And nowadays, you almost always have an alternative. Increasingly often it's a more capable, more actively maintained, and better supported option that comes with the added bonus of not needing to take the time to get special approval from your legal department.

> if you're selling non-SAAS products

Pretty funny, considering how much RMS dislikes SAAS.

I do not know, but I suspect this is exactly why RMS dislikes SAAS: because it can technically obey a license without having to give users the freedoms he designed the GPL to give.

It's deeper than that. By its very nature, SAAS precludes every single one of the freedoms that the GPL is designed to give.

The GPL isn't really about sharing source code; that's just a means to an end. The GPL is about being able to exercise complete control over - and having complete knowledge of - all the software that you use. To an approximation, SAAS is about the opposite of that.

Microsoft might not be happy with the GPL itself, but given they are working on LibGit, and not all of GitHub (or any?) of their main software they "sell" (github enterprise, their client apps like GitHub for Windows and OSX) are open source, Microsoft would probably have no issues with the GPL. It would also be interesting if MS did buy GitHub. Wasent one of the GitHub founders an employee of a company who was bought by Microsoft and he either dident move over or left after a minimum time?

I think most people have issue with GPL to be honest. So they aren't alone there.

> It's all out in the open.

Really? So they release the source to a few of their developer frameworks and tools, and they're now "all open"?

Don't get me wrong, as a long time C# developer I do appreciate the gesture and I'm especially happy that they're working their "not invented here" mentality, but with simply providing us with the source code that we already have anyway (via ilspy), all of this just seems over-inflated to me.

Let me compile Visual Studio, and I'll be their biggest cheerleader; or IIS, IE... and I'll promise to stop dressing as one.

On buying Github, though? That could be the final 'E' of their strategy.

Completely agreed. Once Microsoft releases the VS source code, I'll be completely sold on the idea that it's reformed. Until then, this seems like very effective developer relations management.

Why the VS source code? It would be almost entirely useless to anybody as there is 2 decades of legacy in that code base and MS has massive teams just trying to keep it all together. Only open source things that are WORTH open sourcing i.e. where you want active contributors.

If I could compile VS myself, on my own box, that would be massive in ways that are hard to articulate. I wouldn't be contributing to VS. I'd be modifying VS for my own purposes, which is what open source is about.

Why VS? So when things are removed, "we" can continue to maintain them. Sure, that provides no benefit for Microsoft but it does to its customers. It will also show the are serious about being "all open", rather than a few self-satisfying token gestures.

This isn't big because Microsoft has stared sharing source. The source to the .NET framework has been available _without_ ILSpy for years now.

This is big because Microsoft is truly embracing an open source development model. They've opened most of the .NET platform up to the whole shebang - pull requests, copying code into other projects, forking, all that good stuff.

So the big deal is that we're now allowed to modify the code of a few libraries?

Fair enough.

MS is closed source? People Bitch.

MS moves to open source parts? People Bitch.

Can't win...

Yeah until they open source something else important to their platform (e.g. the NT kernel, DirectX, Trident/Chakra) saying they've fully embraced open source is a little premature.

My point is that the changes in Microsoft's attitude toward open source have occurred in the open.

It is a response to its parent comment which strongly suggests the attitude reflects a sudden and nefarious change in Microsoft's behaviour.

It's great to see MS making smart choices!

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