On Mon, Jun 04, 2018 at 02:07:04PM +0100, Mark Rousell wrote: > 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.
What can possibly go wrong for non-free software projects? Microsoft is only one of the most powerful competitor in the software industry, whatever kind of software you are talking about. If I owned a software company, I would think through it over and over before putting my own code in a "private" repository to which Microsoft has access. They have historically been very quick and efficient at stealing, suffocating, and extinguishing. And in practice there is no GDPR to protect you in a lawsuit against Microsoft. What can go wrong for free software projects? Microsoft knows that GitHub is a goldmine of ideas and cool projects, and owning it means profiling the free software community with an unprecedented accuracy. They will certainly push their own development toolkits and goodies through github, with the aim of making them "standard" also in the free software world. And once something is "standard", the rest must be automatically suffocated and extinguished... Whatever people say on twitter, Microsoft has never changed and never will. It's the same company that stole BASIC. The same company that stole DOS. The same company that put an insane amount of money in the SCO lawsuit on Linux. The same company which called free-software "a cancer". The same company that forbids resellers to sell Windows in dual-boot configurations. The same company who paid a half-journalist to collect FUD about Linux Torvalds and the kernel developers about allegedly "stolen" code from Unix. It's the same company. The same people. The same silly faces. The same mindset. The same aims. The same methods. The same sour ending. HND KatolaZ -- [ ~.,_ Enzo Nicosia aka KatolaZ - Devuan -- Freaknet Medialab ] [ "+. katolaz [at] freaknet.org --- katolaz [at] yahoo.it ] [ @) http://kalos.mine.nu --- Devuan GNU + Linux User ] [ @@) http://maths.qmul.ac.uk/~vnicosia -- GPG: 0B5F062F ] [ (@@@) Twitter: @KatolaZ - skype: katolaz -- github: KatolaZ ]
signature.asc
Description: PGP signature
_______________________________________________ Dng mailing list Dng@lists.dyne.org https://mailinglists.dyne.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/dng
