Microsoft purchasing GITHub
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The latest move by Microsoft to purchase GITHub in an all-stock offer is making rounds on the headlines. Is it good for Microsoft or GitHub? Would open source be challenged by proprietary software?
Bad for Open source.
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Bad for Open source.
There's a very good article about this linked on the Insider News forum today - I recommend you read it. The point is this - GitHub is leaking cash like nobody's business and can only realistically survive if bought by one of the tech giants. Of those giants, Microsoft are the only one that has shown any genuine commitment to open source. If you have a compelling argument as to why it would be in safer hands with Google, Facebook, Amazon or IBM, I'd love to hear it.
98.4% of statistics are made up on the spot.
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Bad for Open source.
Why? Microsoft is one of the biggest contributors on github now. Perhaps you would care to elaborate with a well thought out and well reasoned argument.
This space for rent
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There's a very good article about this linked on the Insider News forum today - I recommend you read it. The point is this - GitHub is leaking cash like nobody's business and can only realistically survive if bought by one of the tech giants. Of those giants, Microsoft are the only one that has shown any genuine commitment to open source. If you have a compelling argument as to why it would be in safer hands with Google, Facebook, Amazon or IBM, I'd love to hear it.
98.4% of statistics are made up on the spot.
PeejayAdams wrote:
GitHub is leaking cash like nobody's business and can only realistically survive if bought by one of the tech giants.
Hmmmm.... I guess that makes sense. I (and many others) use the free service. There are no advertisements, so how would they make any money? And that leads us to an interesting set of things to think about. * Companies eat money to survive -- if nothing else just to pay employees. * Many users are turned off by free stuff that has advertising. * Often those same users are turned off by a large company buying out the company. How can the company survive if they have no revenue stream? They cannot. They're either going to monetize the site (advertise) or be bought up by the Big Corp. I really like GitHub and hope it doesn't change under M$ direction.
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PeejayAdams wrote:
GitHub is leaking cash like nobody's business and can only realistically survive if bought by one of the tech giants.
Hmmmm.... I guess that makes sense. I (and many others) use the free service. There are no advertisements, so how would they make any money? And that leads us to an interesting set of things to think about. * Companies eat money to survive -- if nothing else just to pay employees. * Many users are turned off by free stuff that has advertising. * Often those same users are turned off by a large company buying out the company. How can the company survive if they have no revenue stream? They cannot. They're either going to monetize the site (advertise) or be bought up by the Big Corp. I really like GitHub and hope it doesn't change under M$ direction.
I think what Microsoft could well do here is leave it pretty much as it is. They'll certainly believe that they can run it at less of a loss - they're pretty good at running a business, after all. What losses remain can be justified quite easily as a "soft" marketing expense. Rather than spoiling things with explicit advertising they can simply say that the resulting gain in good-will from the development community will, in the long-run, lead to a higher uptake of Microsoft technologies and ultimately, any money spent on GitHub is money well spent. It's not entirely dissimilar to the way that they already promote .NET with the VS and SQL Express editions. Offer people the chance to learn with free versions of enterprise level tools and there's every chance that a few years down the line when those same people are making tech choices for their employers or their start-ups that they'll opt for .NET because they know it and trust it. These are far more effective strategies than any kind of direct advertising could ever hope to be. Yes, some people will blindly bitch about it because a big corporation is involved but I don't see that there arguments are valid as long as the corporation is adopting a fundamentally symbiotic approach.
98.4% of statistics are made up on the spot.
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Why? Microsoft is one of the biggest contributors on github now. Perhaps you would care to elaborate with a well thought out and well reasoned argument.
This space for rent
there's fish out there that think humans are wonderful, because they keep throwing food into the sea, ... until one day when that food has hook in it. Not so good after all. microsoft is saturating the environment with free stuff. and lest we forget all their free stuff does come with their version of a free ware/source licences. Reminds me of something...
Harmlessly passing your time in the grassland away
Only dimly aware of a certain unease in the air
You better watch out
There may be dogs about
I've looked over Jordan, and I have seen
Things are not what they seemWhat do you get for pretending the danger's not real
Meek and obedient you follow the leader
Down well trodden corridors into the valley of steel
What a surprise!
A look of terminal shock in your eyes
Now things are really what they seem
No, this is no bad dream.Name that song. anyway jus saying, and to wrap up another question: why do people study history?
This internet thing is amazing! Letting people use it: worst idea ever!
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there's fish out there that think humans are wonderful, because they keep throwing food into the sea, ... until one day when that food has hook in it. Not so good after all. microsoft is saturating the environment with free stuff. and lest we forget all their free stuff does come with their version of a free ware/source licences. Reminds me of something...
Harmlessly passing your time in the grassland away
Only dimly aware of a certain unease in the air
You better watch out
There may be dogs about
I've looked over Jordan, and I have seen
Things are not what they seemWhat do you get for pretending the danger's not real
Meek and obedient you follow the leader
Down well trodden corridors into the valley of steel
What a surprise!
A look of terminal shock in your eyes
Now things are really what they seem
No, this is no bad dream.Name that song. anyway jus saying, and to wrap up another question: why do people study history?
This internet thing is amazing! Letting people use it: worst idea ever!
It's from Animals by Pink Floyd - is it called Pigs? - edit: no, it's called Sheep, isn't it? - Animals is probably the Floyd album I've listened to least bar the odd lesser-known thing like More and Obscured by Clouds. I believe that people study history so that they can marvel at mankind's inability to learn from its mistakes.
98.4% of statistics are made up on the spot.
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The latest move by Microsoft to purchase GITHub in an all-stock offer is making rounds on the headlines. Is it good for Microsoft or GitHub? Would open source be challenged by proprietary software?
There was a very well designed authentication (and partially authorization) system, open source and developed to an academic perfection according to MIT standards: Kerberos[^]. Microsoft said: Let's go for it. So the open source agitators said: We're not going to touch anything that makes us compatible with anything from MS! Let's make something else! So - in traditional open source style - about a dozen competing alternatives were created, with OpenID and SAML as the most prominent in my corner of the world, all inferior to Kerberos. The X.500 directory was standaridized 25-30 years ago by ISO and ITU. Since implementing an X.500 client isn't suitable as a student project, the open source communities made a lightweight version of the API, to be run over TCP, but the underlaying database is still the X.500 design. With little hope of making Kerberos the standard authentication, MS went for LDAP as their primary atunentication protocol. Again: MS is using it - then WE certainly will not, even though we developed it! I guess there are other projects using LDAP authentication, but once MS selected it, lots of people turned their back to LDAP. For many years, open source people were constantly bitching about IE not supporting SVG. If only IE would allow SVG support, we would have perfectly scalable internet graphics! Then IE got SVG support, and everybody forgot about SVG. Use a canvas! IE has poor canvas support, so then the users must choose some non-MS browser... Should we recall the OOXML/ODF war? When MSO got ODF support, the ODF format died. There are lots of other examples: It is a continous power struggle. For the majority of the open source community, a very essential part of the struggle is to stay at a distance from MS. "We must support anything that the enemy opposes, and oppose anything that the enemy supports" - historically, that is closely tied to "From everyone according to ability - to everone according to need", which goes hand-in-hand with open source ideology. The open source community has shown a great ability to switch distribution platforms. ftp.funet.fi was abandoned in favor of SourceForge, which became the world's biggest storehouse for reinvented wheels. When then the open source High Priest presented a new and holier than any other source control system, and a global repo was set up according to the Scriptures, S
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It's from Animals by Pink Floyd - is it called Pigs? - edit: no, it's called Sheep, isn't it? - Animals is probably the Floyd album I've listened to least bar the odd lesser-known thing like More and Obscured by Clouds. I believe that people study history so that they can marvel at mankind's inability to learn from its mistakes.
98.4% of statistics are made up on the spot.
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Lesley[^] got there before you. Twice.[^]
Bad command or file name. Bad, bad command! Sit! Stay! Staaaay... AntiTwitter: @DalekDave is now a follower!
Interesting corollary post. Thanks for sharing the same.
