Time to move on from GitHub: Micro$oft new owner

[Bikerdude]

https://www.fudzilla.com/news/46458-microsoft-confirms-it-has-bought-github

[kano]

Wonder how long until this is taken down.

 

https://www.theregister.co.uk/2017/04/19/chap_fixes_microsofts_windows_7_and_8_update_block_on_new_cpus/

[chakkman]

So, Microsoft buys it, you have no idea what they gonna do with it, and you already proclaim it is time to move on from Github? Man, just relax, and wait what they'll do with it. Microsoft gives away Visual Studio, they give away their programming languages, and they also work with, and support Open Source software. There is absolutely no guarantee that they do any BS with Github. I really wished people would be less agitated and paranoid these days.

Edited June 5, 2018 by chakkman

[Bikerdude]

Wonder how long until this is taken down.

The guy can just move his code and files elsewhere.

Edited June 5, 2018 by Bikerdude

[Oktokolo]

If they screw Github you can always just upload your projects somewhere else. So nothing to worry about if you are not a business user.

[stumpy]

you still need a microsoft account to login and use visual studio's if you are outside america, else it wont work.

[Cambridge Spy]

forlik moved his MoTmod from GitHub to Google Drive long ago, perhaps it would be an alternative for you?

[demagogue]

I liked using my github page for my blog, one reason being its independence. You can also just set up your own system, no restrictions except they have to be static pages (no Java, etc), so I use Hugo... But static sites are better anyway IMO, they compile super fast and aren't bloated down like Wordpress et al. I don't know if Google Drive allows you to have your own domain name and put up a site like that. And anyway I'm kind of attached to my github domain. So as long as MS keeps the free github domains & doesn't mess with them, then I'll stick with it. But it's kind of a drag it won't have the same feeling of being authentically indie that it use to have.

[pacman]

So, Microsoft buys it, you have no idea what they gonna do with it, and you already proclaim it is time to move on from Github? Man, just relax, and wait what they'll do with it. Microsoft gives away Visual Studio, they give away their programming languages, and they also work with, and support Open Source software. There is absolutely no guarantee that they do any BS with Github. I really wished people would be less agitated and paranoid these days.

 

Releasing source code for vscode doesn't mean they have given away Visual Studio. And it's not a matter of paranoia, some people look at history before giving a chance.

People fear that this could be their Embrace, Expand, and Extinguish strategy. Embrace first, then Expand in incompatible ways, and then Extinguish[1]. This would not become obvious until it gets bad, until they put a sticker on the login screen 2 years later forcing you to give out a phone number or login through microsoft, or worse, and you are too dependent on the features made incompatible with other platforms that you cannot just give it up (Issues and discussions are already incompatible with, say, gitlab, I guess).

Waiting is not bad advice, but neither is removing github as a dependency (or maybe just having a backup).

[End of response to any specific person]

 

It is not obvious what would happen with private repositories, they "say" it would be open, but for how long? (And would they really be private from microsoft?)

They have been against Floss, before it was called Floss, probably when in 1976 Bill Gates wrote his letter to hobbyists[2].

 

Personally, I don't hate microsoft, I have just moved on, & I don't want to be a part of their corporate software world, community software is much more enjoyable. And I fear sooner or later, they will have to get back those $7.5 x 10^9. I don't know what will be their strategy then. They have changed their position on Linux rather radically for what they called cancer, Now MS <3 Linux, that is enough I think to make them unpredictable. If this is an effect of, eg. their new product(Linux Distro, and Azure), then who knows what their next product be?

That said, I moved to gitlab long ago, before any MS Github bullshit.

 

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embrace,_extend,_and_extinguish

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_Letter_to_Hobbyists

Edited June 6, 2018 by pacman

[pacman]

 

I liked using my github page for my blog, one reason being its independence. You can also just set up your own system, no restrictions except they have to be static pages (no Java, etc), so I use Hugo... But static sites are better anyway IMO, they compile super fast and aren't bloated down like Wordpress et al. I don't know if Google Drive allows you to have your own domain name and put up a site like that. And anyway I'm kind of attached to my github domain. So as long as MS keeps the free github domains & doesn't mess with them, then I'll stick with it. But it's kind of a drag it won't have the same feeling of being authentically indie that it use to have.

 

 

Gitlab has gitlab pages, similar to github pages, for static websites.

[chakkman]

Releasing source code for vscode doesn't mean they have given away Visual Studio.

 

I didn't mean that they completely open source'd it, i meant that they provide it for indie developers, people starting out, or even advanced developers. Same with their programming languages. Basically, what i meant is that i don't see a reason to suspect anything developers would have to "fear", because, as a operating system vendor, they vastly benefit from as many developers as possible. Hope that was more clear than my former post.

Edited June 6, 2018 by chakkman

[Oktokolo]

People fear that this could be their Embrace, Expand, and Extinguish strategy.

It is not obvious what would happen with private repositories, they "say" it would be open, but for how long? (And would they really be private from microsoft?)

They have been against Floss, before it was called Floss, probably when in 1976 Bill Gates wrote his letter to hobbyists[2].

Of course they want to integrate Github into their subscription-based cloud services. And surely they will try to monetize the shit out of it. I expect ads and telemetry for the freely hosted repos. Could also be, that there will be no "free" repo hosting in the future.

 

But seriously: Who should really care about that?

Whether a hobbyist dev or company - you surely already have as much backups of your repo as you have devs in your group - because that is, how GIT works.

So the most yopu could potentially lose is the extra services - bug tracker, pull requests, projects (don't even know what that is) and the wiki. The wiki would be the most valuable information to lose - if you even used it for more than ten pages anyway. Most do not use the wiki and most of wich who "use" it, might as well drop the horribly outdated mess they created to start fresh somewhere else.

You also could just drop the data of the Github bug tracker and get a fresh one somehwere else. It would not really change that much for the average project (TDM is not an average project - its bug tracker is huge and actually contains valuable information).

 

So if your project is small or you don't use the wiki or bug tracker that extensively, you need not care about whether Github gets screwed or not. Just move on as soon as it gets too annoying to keep using it.

If you are a huge or well-funded project, you should not have used Github's gratis service anyway. Go get a proper server and host the repo, wiki, bugtracker and collaboration tools yourself now. Or get a subscription from a SaaS provider like Gitlab or even Github (probably nothing changes for subscription-based services anyway) if you feel adventurous or really like outsourcing a lot.

 

Don't panic.