Microsoft Has Reportedly Reached A Deal To Acquire GitHub

[Kendji]

Soon there will be changes to the github user agrement, giving ownership of the code to microsoft or forcing ppl to licence the code under some microsoft licence

[sdack]

Well, I like all the suspicions people have about Microsoft. It shows how much people despise corporate monopolies and value their freedom.

However, I believe Linux is already dominating the industry more than Microsoft could. And Microsoft knows this, too. Bill Gates is no longer the head of M$ and Steve Balmer is also gone. Since 2014 is Satya Nadella the CEO. Interestingly did he start out as Sun Microsystems man. I believe he is trying to save Microsoft by turning them into a Linux company. To quote from a Bloomberg article:

Redmond, Washington-based Microsoft is now one of the biggest contributors to GitHub, and as Nadella moves the company away from complete dependence on the Windows operating system to more in-house development on Linux, the company needs new ways to connect with the broader developer community.

I know it's hard to believe, but the only way M$ has a chance to survive as a big company is to embrace Linux and not to fight it, and I believe this is what they've been doing more and more. A decade ago would nobody ever have thought of a Windows Subsystems for Linux (WSL) becoming a thing. And now it's here, allowing developers to develop for both Linux and Windows more easily.

I would no longer be surprised to see Microsoft switching to a Linux kernel and turning Windows itself into a Linux OS while maintaining their dominance in the PC market. Frankly, I already buy a Windows license now and then just to have it next to my Linux, and I would continue to do so if it means I can get a version of Windows that's somehow based on Linux and still made by Microsoft.

So I'm cool with M$ buying GitHub. It has alternative sites and many will flee from GitHub, I'm sure. I'll remain skeptical, but I am also getting more interested to see where M$ is going with this and if they will succeed in their transition towards open source.

[vein]

*Inhales*
*Migrates code to gitlab*
*Deletes Account*
*Exhales*

So what to do today....

[Redfoxmoon]

If what I've heard about their internal culture is true* then let's hope the toxicity spreading to the rest of Microsoft is to them as what the photon torpedoes down the exhaust vents were to the Death Star. However a more likely end result is what happened to Skype and how Microsoft ruined everything great about it, starting from the anonymous peer-to-peer architecture and just made it a boring part of Microsoft's business offerings.

*Even Coralie Ada Ehmke, who used to work there for a brief period but left because of the toxic culture, thinks GitHub management has lost the plot.

Ehmke, toxicity incarnate thinks github is toxic? HMMMM, oh the irony. Contributor Covenant and the other toxic CoCs are what's causing it.

[vein]

I tend to agree, though don't underestimate the difficulty of migrating away. Yes, it's trivial enough to get the code out, because that's just standard git functionality. But a github project is more than just the code... it's the issue-tracking system that would need to be data-migrated to something else, and the tools for branch management and pull requests, things that are critical parts of developer workflow. They *can* be replaced, but it's not a small exercise.

Just for contrast, look at Gnome, having recently migrated from their own in-house infrastructure to GitLab – a project that's taken more than a year to complete. Migrating the code, that was trivial enough, but converting data from Bugzilla, figuring out permissions issues, figuring out how to provide an acceptable workflow for all the developers accustomed to the old one... that's a huge effort.

A tip: gitlab has a great tool for migrating issues from github. Haven't had any issues with it...

https://docs.gitlab.com/ee/user/project/import/github.html

[Apokalypz]

Kinda reminds me of when Disney bought the Star Wars franchise.

[L_A_G]

Ehmke, toxicity incarnate thinks github is toxic? HMMMM, oh the irony. Contributor Covenant and the other toxic CoCs are what's causing it.

The point was that if even Ehmke thinks they've lost the plot* then it's pretty safe to say that they really have lost the plot.

*To demonstrate the point she used the example of how they decided to stop having older more experienced employees mentor new recruits because there were too many white men mentoring women and minority recruits despite knowing that this was the result of their (then) new diversity-oriented hiring policies.

[brrrrttttt]

The main annoyance here is TravisCI is so tightly coupled with Github that they are now part of Microsoft ecosystem whether they want to or not. You can always host your repos elsewhere

Yep, anyone got ideas on what to do about macOS CI on GitLab? I've got Windows and Linux covered with AppVeyor (and maybe GitLab CI once I get a chance to look into it properly)... but TravisCI was it for mac.

[kpedersen]

Kinda reminds me of when Disney bought the Star Wars franchise.

Oh, did the Starwars fans migrate to GitLab then as well?

The difference I guess is that Disney isn't renowned for its EEE strategy that Microsoft loves so very, very much.

A modern example of Microsoft's EEE can be seen here: (https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/vcb...ual-studio-14/)
Tempt C++ developers to .NET with C++/clr. Then when they have intergrated enough C# code in to business critical solutions, simply remove the C++/clr support and fsk(8) them over

[oiaohm]

Yep, anyone got ideas on what to do about macOS CI on GitLab? I've got Windows and Linux covered with AppVeyor (and maybe GitLab CI once I get a chance to look into it properly)... but TravisCI was it for mac.

https://about.gitlab.com/comparison/pdfs/gitlab-vs-travis-ci.pdf

Gitlab own CI works on Windows Linux and OS X. Unfortunately Travis does not have connector to gitlab like AppVeyor does. At this stage you would need to alter you mac workflow and I would be saying look close at the gitlab ci..