On 04/06/2018 02:01, Rick Moen wrote: > For years, I've been politely telling representatives & users of open source > projects (Void Linux, many others) 'Hey, you might want to reconsider > outsourcing your entire source code repos to GitHub, and consider > instead deploying instead one of many actually open source, self-hosted > workalikes such as GitLab.' > > I'm betting they'll see nothing wrong with outsourcing to a > proprietary-software firm run by people they don't know and have no > reason to trust, based on this news. I'm glad it works for them. > > Did I mention GitLab? ;->
To play devil's advocate, what can go wrong? Protecting a project's Github-hosted code from competitors is of course not an issue since it's open source code anyway. The very worst that could happen (and this is absurdly unlikely of course) is that the new Microsoft overlords could ban certain types of project or charge huge fees for them. But, as I say, this is absurdly unlikely. I suppose that Microsoft could potentially just shut down Github entirely (and use it solely as an internal repository) but that seems ridiculously unlikely too. Or maybe they could claim some sort of licence on Github-hosted code but that is incredibly unlikely (and probably legally implausible) as well. As long as projects that currently use Github are sensible enough to keep off-Github backups then it seems to me that there is no real risk at all. If Github was to become unusable for any reason then porting to some other Git environment might be a hassle but it could be done. So I just don't see a problem with this. It will be interesting to see how Github develops. It could actually work out well. I'd been thinking that Github would be a very useful acquisition for Microsoft in terms of extending the already very handy Git and Github integration in Visual Studio. Perhaps the only plausible risk to Github is if Microsoft extend the Visual Studio integration and somehow make it difficult to use other tools but even this seems very unlikely to me. Improving Visual Studio Github integration seems certain but that doesn't mean that they'll seek to block out other tools or make using other tools more difficult. So, what is the next open source acquisition target for Microsoft? A project doing Group Policy integration tools for Linux might be a good (if rather small) choice. Or more significantly perhaps even Red Hat or the SUSE business unit from Micro Focus. A major corporate Linux vendor acquisition would further expand Microsoft's corporate reach (it would be very appealing to corporates if MS could say that you can have Windows and/or Linux and it all integrates transparently within the Microsoft ecosystem) and it would even give them a root into the resurgent mainframe market. I note that SUSE is into OpenStack in a big way and this would definitely suit Microsoft in the longer term. -- Mark Rousell
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