Microsoft Is Said to Have Agreed to Acquire Coding Site GitHub

giahung1997 said:
First, I think Google is more evil than Microsoft today. People kept the bad impressions of the past about Microsoft and couldn't see how they changed now. IMHO, it's nothing wrong or worse for Microsoft to bought GitHub. I fear FOSS paranoid more than that, IT-Communists - I would call them, are basically braindead (or brainwashed) like real life Communists in my country and many country infected by them. Or perhaps a core team was paid by the big player to attack the others and a vast brainwashed teens didn't understand anything but follow the trend to feel like pro (like the online warriors force in my country, they directly paid by the Communist Party, using people's taxes to shut people's mouth up?) ;)

Might be Microsoft will convert the whole Github system from AWS to Azure, I hate Amazon, they're evil. It'll be a good thing.
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Google is definitely more evilissshh than Microsoft. But Microsoft is also very good at it. Github or skype aren't just any reasons. Github *was* really important for opensource.

I guess opensource must not fall into this world.

Look Ubuntu and Linux, it is going to be commercial soon or later. It looks to me like MS Windows, just Open Source Code leave it free, but for how long?

Ads and malwares such as SystemD, Pulseaudio, and all the stuffs are really strange things, which look more Windows, Apple or Google rather than UNIX / Free Unix.
 
I remember seeing this a while back and thinking it actually looked a lot easier to get info from than the default typical webby layout.

In many ways it actually looks like "proper" software. Luckily, even though I occasionally use GitHub, I very rarely ever see it through a web browser :)
 
kpedersen said:
Actually, GitHub also supports SVN. Not even SVN is safe ;)

Perhaps keep with Git, just use a different service or host your own.
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there is no point to use Microsoft products. (= GIT) This is not supporting open source and free software.

svn is old, but still it won't be taken over by Apple, Google, MS,... GITHUB alternatives have bloated website. :(
 
Microsoft do not own Git (don't give them that satisfaction that they have tricked you).
Git is a tool developed by Linus to facilitate remote collaboration when their current VCS system (BitKeeper) started putting restrictions on them.

Likewise when Microsoft ran CodePlex (Anyone remember that shutting down? It was a great reminder that "cloud" services are flawed), just because it supported SVN, didn't mean Microsoft owned SVN.

Granted, Git is over engineered and quite bloated (I.e compared to svnserve, the Git alternative is nowhere near as elegant and it drags in most of the POSIX environment in Windows. This is proof that it is a typical GNU technology. Not from Redmond ;)
 
Micro$oft is brilliant! Bill Gate$ discovered (quite by accident) long ago (M$DOS) that producing $hitty $oftware was big business. You sell M$ certification, so that once obtained you become a "Preferred Partner", and get first crack at providing your services (M$ support). This makes businesses, and provides profit for all. No one actually believes Micro$oft has survived because they make a good product. Do they? How naivé.
So why does M$ give a hoot about GitHubub? 1) Because they would have had to pay taxes on those 4+ billion dollar earnings; investing those earnings. Allows them to differ those taxes until they strip GitHubub of any value they can squeeze from it. At which point, they'll kick it to the curb, and spend those $$ on something else. 2) In todays' world, "big data" is big business. There is a great deal of (user) information to be gleaned from GH -- a lot. Make no mistake; they'll take everything there is. It's theirs now. They paid for it.
Frankly. I never cared for GH. I didn't care for their exclusive policy, and attitude. I quickly dropped them, and moved to GitLab. Where they have an inclusive attitude, and where I, as a member, actually have control on it's future direction.

--Chris
 
PMc said:
So the value is belief, and there is no product?[1] And this is what the future of our economics is built upon? Well then... we're back in feudalism. Hail Eris!

[1] or maybe rather: the product is believe and there is no value?
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This is nothing new. Money has had no value since the end of the "gold standard". The value of money now, is no more than an "I'll pay you later", or "I promise to pay you this". It's just an IOU. It has no other value, any more than a nations GDP.
It's all smoke-and-mirrors, and been that way since 1930-ish. In the US.

--Chris
 
kpedersen said:
Git is a tool developed by Linus to facilitate remote collaboration when their current VCS system (BitKeeper) started putting restrictions on them.
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That statement is so simplified to be wrong. Git was indeed developed by Linus. It had to be developed because their previous source control system (BitKeeper) was going to refuse to serve the Linux code repository for free. The reason for that, however, doesn't lie in BitKeeper itself, nor in its CEO Larry McVoy. The reason for that lies in a famous spat between Linus and Andy Tridgell, the father of Samba (the SMB/CIFS file server), of rsync (the remote copy program), and one of the improvers of tcpdump (used to study network packets). The problem occurred when Andy decided to develop an implementation of BitKeeper which was protocol-compatible with the official server. Andy's actions were legal and ethical (he didn't violate trade secrets or licenses), but they caused Larry to go berserk and banish free software from his source code control system. This in turn caused Linus (who can be a complete a** if he wants to, and doesn't suffer from having common decency or common sense) to go off half-cocked and attack Andy, probably out of pointless anger at making life more difficult. This caused Andy to disengage from Linux development, and Linus to quickly over the weekend hack up a new source control system (indeed, the core of git was written in a weekend). Unfortunately, git didn't get the benefit of a thorough requirements analysis and a good design, so today we have ...

Granted, Git is over engineered and quite bloated ...
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That is the result of Linus simply quickly making up the "how" of source control, without thinking through the tradeoffs.

I've used good source control systems (for example Perforce), and much prefer them over git. But it's one of the laws of software that cheap (that is: free) junk drives out good engineering, like bad money drives out good money, so today we as a software community are stuck with git. Oh well.

By the way, this discussion has little to do with GitHub and MicroSoft. I'm just amazed at the sillyness of the folks who see this as a religious war against MicroSoft. Instead of wasting your time tilting at windmills, maybe you should all look at it this way: I have a problem (namely how to organize and control my source code). What is the best tool for the job? If MicroSoft happens to give me the best tool to do my job, I will use it, happily. If someone else gives me the best tool to do my job, I will use that tool instead.
 
shkhln said:
Did you delete your GitHub account yet?
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Just no longer use it.
svn is good replacement for given time frame.

Today you can make money and control people at the same time. Just by invading their closed source computer. Who knows what MS do with your data? Win10 is a good move for MS.

I do not understand why to use MS Windows since you have no free source and besides you pay also ;)
If you pay, why not getting the source code as well?

ralphbsz said:
That statement is so simplified to be wrong. Git was indeed developed by Linus. It had to be developed because their previous source control system (BitKeeper) was going to refuse to serve the Linux code repository for free. The reason for that, however, doesn't lie in BitKeeper itself, nor in its CEO Larry McVoy. The reason for that lies in a famous spat between Linus and Andy Tridgell, the father of Samba (the SMB/CIFS file server), of rsync (the remote copy program), and one of the improvers of tcpdump (used to study network packets). The problem occurred when Andy decided to develop an implementation of BitKeeper which was protocol-compatible with the official server. Andy's actions were legal and ethical (he didn't violate trade secrets or licenses), but they caused Larry to go berserk and banish free software from his source code control system. This in turn caused Linus (who can be a complete a** if he wants to, and doesn't suffer from having common decency or common sense) to go off half-cocked and attack Andy, probably out of pointless anger at making life more difficult. This caused Andy to disengage from Linux development, and Linus to quickly over the weekend hack up a new source control system (indeed, the core of git was written in a weekend). Unfortunately, git didn't get the benefit of a thorough requirements analysis and a good design, so today we have ...
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who wrote the first git code during this above-mentioned weekend?
 
ralphbsz said:
If MicroSoft happens to give me the best tool to do my job, I will use it, happily.
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I do and I don't quite agree with this one. Sure, Microsoft may happen to at some points give the best tool for a job but history has always repeated itself and shown it is short lived and Microsoft will always aggressively monetize whilst inadvertently reducing the usefulness of the software by adding restrictions. Sometimes lifespan and stability of a tool is much more important than it being the "best".

Now I am sure you know many of their EEE schemes but it is also the new trend of "developer licenses" and "control" that they want to exert on corporations. I feel it is due diligence in the workplace to actively avoid dealing with all companies like Microsoft when at all possible (and preferably go open-source even when the solution is slightly less effective).

Lets see what they do with GitHub. After all, there is a reason why they paid some billions for it and I can guarantee it is not to make my and your life easier ;)
 
I understand both of your points and am always torn about the need to write code for Microsoft products at times. I've recounted the story of being screwed by Microsoft many years ago and it has left a bad taste in my mouth since. Needing to create software for a Windows machine is always an irritation. It's always more difficult and clunky and I always and we always feel like Darth Vader is looking over our shoulders as we do it.

I never, EVER understand why I watch the local weather and see the weather man with a computer showing Windows on it. Why oh why would anyone write a professional, scientific program to run on Windows? It's as if CERN started using XBox.
 
Spartrekus said:
svn is good replacement for given time frame.
...
Who knows what MS do with your data?
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You do understand that MicroSoft can read anything that is stored on open source SVN repositories?
And that MicroSoft was able to read anything stored on open source GitHub repository even before they bought it?

If you want to store your source code such that MicroSoft (and all the other companies you don't like) can't get to it, then don't open source it, and store it only on servers you control.

If you pay, why not getting the source code as well?
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Sometimes, closed source software ends up being a better solution than open source. It depends on the problem.

who wrote the first git code during this above-mentioned weekend?
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Linus; he wrote the first version of git all himself, mostly in one weekend. He may have many other shortcomings as a person, but he is a very good coder.
 
drhowarddrfine said:
I never, EVER understand why I watch the local weather and see the weather man with a computer showing Windows on it. Why oh why would anyone write a professional, scientific program to run on Windows? It's as if CERN started using XBox.
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What makes you think the systems they use to create forecasts on and the system they use to project pretty pictures during the newscast is the same? The pictures and animations you see during the newscasts are really nothing more than a glorified Powerpoint presentation.
 
kpedersen said:
I do and I don't quite agree with this one. Sure, Microsoft may happen to at some points give the best tool for a job but history has always repeated itself and shown it is short lived and Microsoft will always aggressively monetize whilst inadvertently reducing the usefulness of the software by adding restrictions. Sometimes lifespan and stability of a tool is much more important than it being the "best".
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And in spite of MicroSoft's obvious goal of making money off of its customers, their product is sometimes the best choice. In particular looking at it in the long term. Not always. Saying that "Microsoft is always a bad deal" is so wrong, it is ridiculous. On the other hand, saying "always buy your software (or service) from Microsoft" is also completely ridiculous. On a case-by-case basis, you have to make an intelligent evaluation, without religious dogma.

I feel it is due diligence in the workplace to actively avoid dealing with all companies like Microsoft when at all possible (and preferably go open-source even when the solution is slightly less effective).
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I use oodles of open source software, both at home and at work. I agree that many times, open source is the most appropriate solution. But not always. We were discussing source control systems above, and a few years ago, I deliberately bought a 10-user license with fully paid annual support from Perforce for our group at work. That's in spite of the fact that there are ample free solutions (cvs, git, subversion, ...) and the fact that my employer at the time had two other commercial source control systems that were available for free within the company (CMVC and ClearCase). We spent a week studying the pro's and con's of the various systems, and decided that spending money on proprietary software was the best solution, which in the long run saved us money. We did not go into the decision with the religious dogma that we must buy from Microsoft, or that we must use free software, but we looked for the best solution.
 
This whole GitHub/Microsoft thing is just really relevant at this first moment to people using the paid service to have hidden repositories (aka proprietary or secret). I would not trust any proprietary/secret code hosted by MS (and probably anyone) unless they were a part of the project too.

Later, depending of what decisions they do (like messing everything, quite possible since we are talking about MS), the thing can potentially affect everyone.

If I had anything relevant on GitHub (that would be free) and I would keep my local copy (or on another service) independently of who own the thing.
 
drhowarddrfine said:
Why oh why would anyone write a professional, scientific program to run on Windows?
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This is not just professional/scientific software (IMO), it is more like why would anyone write any non-desktop software (or something related with something they need and just do exist on Windows) for Windows?

I mean, it is not about "I don't like MS/Windows" but all major available OSes (AIX, Linux, *BSD, MacOS, Solaris and sons, etc.) are quite similar and would be rather easier to port between them if necessary than from Windows, what is incompatible with everything (including Windows).

Look at the Munich tentative to move on to Linux. Failed for several reasons (most probably management) but they hit a ton of problems related with critical (infrastructure) software they write for Windows, and would be rather expensive to re-write.
 
drhowarddrfine said:
I never, EVER understand why I watch the local weather and see the weather man with a computer showing Windows on it. Why oh why would anyone write a professional, scientific program to run on Windows? It's as if CERN started using XBox.
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They (the weather people) didn't choose that computer. Micro$oft gave them that computer, for publicity.
Fear not. They don't run anything important on it. Just keep notes, records, and stuff on it. :)
Oh, and it's the same for computers in movies. Companies bid for the opportunity to have their products "showcased" in the film(s). Same for cars, and other products that the brand name is visible.

--Chris
 
Also keep in mind that the program on that box likely only does a database query to a database filled by a cluster of different beasts. At least that is what climate simulations tend to do. But the difference between weather and climate calculations is not only size.
 
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