Microsoft acquires GitHub
GitHub will retain its developer-first ethos and will operate independently to provide an open platform for all developers in all industries. Developers will continue to be able to use the programming languages, tools and operating systems of their choice for their projects — and will still be able to deploy their code to any operating system, any cloud and any device."
Posted Jun 4, 2018 13:18 UTC (Mon)
by zoobab (guest, #9945)
[Link] (2 responses)
Github is not open source.
I will remove all my projects from there as now on.
Posted Jun 4, 2018 13:53 UTC (Mon)
by hrw (subscriber, #44826)
[Link]
Posted Jun 4, 2018 15:01 UTC (Mon)
by dsommers (subscriber, #55274)
[Link]
With all due respect .... this announcement mentions "open source" only twice. And none of them speaks of GitHub as being open source.
1) "Microsoft Corporate Vice President Nat Friedman, founder of Xamarin and an open source veteran, will assume the role of GitHub CEO."
2) GitHub is home for modern developers and the world’s most popular destination for open source projects and software innovation.
I don't recall any place in any time where GitHub has been considered being open source. It got momentum as sourceforge.net, freshmeat.net/freecode.net and the likes failed to follow the evolution of web based service platforms over a longer time.
GitHub is by far better, from a web service point of view, than many of the alternatives. Which is why open source projects have more or less embraced it. Which gives the advantage that "every developer" is on GitHub. On a personal level, I like GitLab far better, which is also quite a bit more open source friendly - especially on the service side.
Posted Jun 4, 2018 13:20 UTC (Mon)
by Xiol (guest, #87394)
[Link] (3 responses)
We've been using self-hosting Gitlab EES at my company for years now and I've been very impressed with it. Guess I'll be moving my personal repos from GitHub to Gitlab over the coming weeks.
Just hoping they've learnt from their mistakes with regards to dropping production databases...
Posted Jun 4, 2018 13:56 UTC (Mon)
by Herve5 (subscriber, #115399)
[Link] (2 responses)
Posted Jun 4, 2018 14:29 UTC (Mon)
by paulj (subscriber, #341)
[Link] (1 responses)
I assume gitea is as easy to install and maintain.
Posted Jun 4, 2018 22:00 UTC (Mon)
by dfsmith (guest, #20302)
[Link]
Posted Jun 4, 2018 13:33 UTC (Mon)
by cdamian (subscriber, #1271)
[Link] (27 responses)
First thing I expect will be some optional Azure integration.
And good on the GitHub guys, it is a pretty nice product that helped the open source community in many ways.
Microsoft is not the same evil company that it used to be, even if I would avoid using their OS and languages myself.
Posted Jun 4, 2018 13:57 UTC (Mon)
by xowap (guest, #124563)
[Link] (22 responses)
Yes it is. Nothing has changed, except they run Linux on Azure and open-sourced a bunch of JavaScript bullshit.
Posted Jun 4, 2018 14:19 UTC (Mon)
by mageta (subscriber, #89696)
[Link]
Especially considering Microsoft's stance on using "Telemetry" wherever they can, without an option to opt-out, I can only conclude that I will not be using Github for my personal work anymore, not that I ever did apart from two very small things some years ago.
Posted Jun 4, 2018 14:27 UTC (Mon)
by evad (subscriber, #60553)
[Link] (19 responses)
Microsoft is fighting the easy low-cost startup tech stack of Linux + open source programming language + open source IDEs + open source databases. They have simply changed tactic. Now rather than attacking Linux directly they're offering some tools on Linux, but the real goal is to hook you into their ecosystem and then move you onto Windows and Windows Server/Azure.
Posted Jun 4, 2018 14:38 UTC (Mon)
by hubcapsc (subscriber, #98078)
[Link] (2 responses)
> Exactly, and both things are only being done to encourage people to switch
I can't imagine how github changing ownership would cause me to
Visual Studio, which I don't use, is an awesome IDE though...
-Mike
Posted Jun 4, 2018 15:01 UTC (Mon)
by evad (subscriber, #60553)
[Link]
Posted Jun 4, 2018 22:17 UTC (Mon)
by dgm (subscriber, #49227)
[Link]
Posted Jun 4, 2018 16:28 UTC (Mon)
by pizza (subscriber, #46)
[Link] (14 responses)
This reduces "Linux" to just another feature of Windows -- Why would one ever need to leave the nice safe embrace of Windows any more?
Posted Jun 4, 2018 17:36 UTC (Mon)
by excors (subscriber, #95769)
[Link] (13 responses)
I think a similar argument was used in the context of OS/2 supporting Windows applications - why would a developer target OS/2 if they could target Windows and run on both? And then why would a user buy OS/2 when applications were more native on Windows? And similar for Wine, and for mobile OSes supporting Android apps. In all those cases, supporting X's APIs on Y was seen as bad for Y's market share (though when Y's market share was tiny it was perhaps less bad than the alternative). By the same logic, Windows supporting Linux APIs should be bad for Windows, and only makes sense if maintaining a Windows monopoly is no longer a priority for Microsoft (because the market is shrinking, while Office and cloud services make more money and are growing faster and don't mind what OS you're running).
Posted Jun 4, 2018 18:13 UTC (Mon)
by pizza (subscriber, #46)
[Link] (1 responses)
It will also lead to the classic OS/2 scenario you described, because why target or "support" Linux directly when you can just tell folks to run Windows and get both?
It's the first two thirds of the classic EEE play. Time will tell if the third comes to pass.
Posted Jun 4, 2018 19:26 UTC (Mon)
by Cyberax (✭ supporter ✭, #52523)
[Link]
So they decided to make sure that people can at least consider Windows as a development platform.
Posted Jun 4, 2018 18:31 UTC (Mon)
by HelloWorld (guest, #56129)
[Link] (10 responses)
Posted Jun 5, 2018 3:21 UTC (Tue)
by geuder (subscriber, #62854)
[Link] (9 responses)
That's not 100% true. There have always been X11 servers on Windows..
A not so tech-savy (or should I say ideologically unstable...) acquaintance of mine had installed some free (as in free beer at least) Xserver in Windows and asked me how to start a GUI application from WSL. To my surprise it was only a 150 MB apt-get and an export DISPLAY=... statement away.
No, I have no idea how feasible that is for real work or whether one would end up in eternal incompatibilities and crashes. But at least 20+ years ago I did all my Unix work from Windows 3.11 running Exceed, a commercial X11 server implementation. Of course 3.11 was as unstable as it was, but Exceed was a pretty good product, probably quite expensive.
(I did not memorize what Xserver my acquaintance had installed, because I don't intend to use Windows any time soon. I guess it must have been Xming.)
Posted Jun 5, 2018 3:59 UTC (Tue)
by marcH (subscriber, #57642)
[Link]
After a lapse I had to do something like this again. Out of curiosity and for a change I started using WSL + Xming + ssh forwarding and while not super responsive it's perfectly usable.
Posted Jun 6, 2018 0:15 UTC (Wed)
by wahern (subscriber, #37304)
[Link] (5 responses)
It's been many years since I've used Windows, but I remember it being similarly simple, at least compared to the VNC and RDP alternatives. IIRC I variously used both a [trial] commercial server as well as Cygwin's XFree86 port.
Posted Jun 6, 2018 18:57 UTC (Wed)
by Wol (subscriber, #4433)
[Link] (4 responses)
Which is probably inevitable, seeing as Wayland is X13 in all but name ...
But seeing as one of the driving forces behind Wayland seems to be to fix X11's design faults, I'm guessing your problems may just disappear in the transition.
Cheers,
Posted Jun 7, 2018 2:39 UTC (Thu)
by wahern (subscriber, #37304)
[Link] (3 responses)
If and when Wayland manages to supplant X11 such that X11 drawing support disappears from GUI toolkits, network transparent GUI applications will simply die. That will be because any mechanism to make Wayland as seamlessly network transparent as X11 would involve bolting on an entirely duplicative protocol which would look no different than the Wayland+X11 solution. The chances of GUI toolkits actually integrating such a beast, were it ever to come to fruition, after having ditched X11 client support would be nil. Basically, network transparent GUIs will live and die with X11.
Posted Jun 7, 2018 6:49 UTC (Thu)
by Wol (subscriber, #4433)
[Link] (1 responses)
I suspect you're confusing Wayland the protocol with Wayland the sample implementation - as I understand it there is absolutely nothing standing in the way of the app running on one computer sending drawing requests down the wire to a renderer on another computer.
I don't know how it works, but aiui there is absolutely nothing in the wire protocol that expects client and server to be on the same computer. So replacing X completely (and being "a better X than X") is definitely on the agenda. It just requires somebody to do the work.
Cheers,
Posted Jun 7, 2018 15:01 UTC (Thu)
by zlynx (guest, #2285)
[Link]
But this isn't a problem. In practice X is no better. Toolkits these days don't use X11 draw functions. It's just bitmaps.
So network display of Wayland works the same as any other remote display system: encode it as a video stream.
Posted Jun 7, 2018 9:23 UTC (Thu)
by NAR (subscriber, #1313)
[Link]
Posted Jun 7, 2018 21:40 UTC (Thu)
by intgr (subscriber, #39733)
[Link] (1 responses)
The sad truth is that it's probably easier now to run X11/Unixy GUI applications on Windows than macOS, despite its "true" Unix heritage. XQuartz has annoying bugs and is entirely unusable on multi-monitor setups.
Posted Jun 8, 2018 5:41 UTC (Fri)
by marcH (subscriber, #57642)
[Link]
Posted Jun 4, 2018 21:06 UTC (Mon)
by jmclnx (guest, #72456)
[Link]
https://blogs.microsoft.com/blog/2018/06/04/microsoft-git...
I see this Quote:
"Second, we will accelerate enterprise developers’ use of GitHub, with our direct sales and partner channels and access to Microsoft’s global cloud infrastructure and services."
seems a bit concerning.
Posted Jun 4, 2018 17:51 UTC (Mon)
by Cyberax (✭ supporter ✭, #52523)
[Link]
Make no mistake, Microsoft will be trying to entice people to use Azure for their projects and they would likely make it very easy to do so. But they'd given up on Windows-only mentality.
Posted Jun 4, 2018 14:00 UTC (Mon)
by eru (subscriber, #2753)
[Link] (2 responses)
Posted Jun 5, 2018 3:32 UTC (Tue)
by geuder (subscriber, #62854)
[Link] (1 responses)
In theory git is perfectly distributed, neither server/service nor vendor lock-in.
However, today people (and small companies) expect and rely on a central repo server running "out there" for free. Not sure how many viable competitors are there for such service. Gitlab had seriously degraded service yesterday, a DDoS orchestrated by Microsoft if you so want.
Posted Jun 5, 2018 4:04 UTC (Tue)
by marcH (subscriber, #57642)
[Link]
git alone doesn't support code reviews, access control, continuous integration, etc. Neither in practice nor in theory. That's why tools like github, gitlab, gerrit, teamforge, etc. exist and are successful; not just to have central repo server.
Posted Jun 4, 2018 15:31 UTC (Mon)
by ay (guest, #79347)
[Link]
Posted Jun 4, 2018 13:58 UTC (Mon)
by imcdnzl (guest, #28899)
[Link] (8 responses)
I didn't need to be - it's been very positive - we were encouraged to open source things that we could and contribute to upstream projects - far more than when pre-acquisition! The use of open source within is very, very heavy these days and the attitudes are the most positive of any corporate I've worked for. What's also surprised me is how much we're encouraged to develop new products in the open.
So as a user of Git from the beginning, then I'm glad that GitHub is in safe hands.
Posted Jun 4, 2018 15:37 UTC (Mon)
by marcH (subscriber, #57642)
[Link] (3 responses)
Another "breaking news": Microsoft has more than 100,000 employees. Based on experiences with similarly sized companies, maybe those employees don't all think and act exactly the same.
To people concerned, looks this is where your attention should stay in the future: https://developer.github.com/v3/migrations/ (think https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Google_Data_Liberation_Front)
Posted Jun 4, 2018 15:44 UTC (Mon)
by imcdnzl (guest, #28899)
[Link]
Posted Jun 4, 2018 17:25 UTC (Mon)
by ballombe (subscriber, #9523)
[Link] (1 responses)
So ? Only an handful are calling the shot.
Posted Jun 4, 2018 20:49 UTC (Mon)
by marcH (subscriber, #57642)
[Link]
Only in small/medium companies it can be that simple, because only there can top-level management wrap their heads around everything. In large companies it's about complex power plays and who succeeds in influencing and gaining the trust of the bosses so: no, not just simple top-down decisions from a handful. Company "culture" also plays a role and there has been many signs Microsoft's has been evolving.
Ironically, democracies seem to currently fall even lower than large companies with respect to how much "democratic" debate and power concentration they have; it's getting harder to even call some of them "democracies". I guess because companies can (if/when they want to) be more selective than democracies and block loud and dogmatic idiots stuck in their ways and gullible to many various scapegoating techniques, lobbies, corruption etc. Interestingly, large companies have also been able to put a ton of money out of reach of nation states. It's really more valuable to be an employee than a citizen nowadays, even more so in the US... I digress.
Posted Jun 5, 2018 4:43 UTC (Tue)
by marcH (subscriber, #57642)
[Link] (3 responses)
LWN is normally one of these very rare sites where there's a good signal/noise ratio in the comments section.
Looking at all the unsubstantiated claims and crystal balls, I realise I never noticed that "Microsoft" should be added to the list of keywords like "systemd" that bring down the S/N ratio to values closer to other sites.
Yeah sure Microsoft was never and is still not a charity and it massively abused many various vendor lock-in techniques in the past. Which for-profit wouldn't have done^H isn't doing the same thing or even worse given the same opportunities?
Maybe Github's future is darker now, maybe not. The truth is: no one has a clue, probably not even Microsoft's management so please shut up.
Not seeing the massive distance made between "Linux is a cancer" and becoming the largest github user, now *that* is "not learning from history". Finally, pretending that many Microsoft developers spending so much time open-sourcing that much code was just the first step of an evil master plan to shut down Github and harm open-source... that is a farce for Infowars not LWN; please relocate.
Posted Jun 5, 2018 7:18 UTC (Tue)
by oldtomas (guest, #72579)
[Link] (1 responses)
Nice try at a meta-discussion.
Given Microsoft's long history of shenanigans, I can really understand all the skepticism expressed here. And it was all expressed in a fairly civil way, mind you.
Posted Jun 5, 2018 14:38 UTC (Tue)
by marcH (subscriber, #57642)
[Link]
Your definition of "noise" seems... "fluid" (but consistently off-topic).
Posted Jun 7, 2018 8:09 UTC (Thu)
by jani (subscriber, #74547)
[Link]
As GitHub has already taken an open source tool, and created a successful vendor lock-in around it, this should be a perfect match...
Posted Jun 4, 2018 14:53 UTC (Mon)
by abraxis (guest, #34961)
[Link] (16 responses)
It's very sad that the community is not learning from history.
Posted Jun 4, 2018 15:25 UTC (Mon)
by z3ntu (subscriber, #117661)
[Link] (15 responses)
Posted Jun 4, 2018 15:44 UTC (Mon)
by felixfix (subscriber, #242)
[Link]
Fences work both ways. Disney fenced themselves in with their crony copyright laws; culture was locked out and moved on, leaving Disney's mouse as something no one cares about. The music industry killed Napster, and a thousand others replaced it, uncontrollable.
So it is with Microsoft's universe. They are no longer indispensable anywhere. They locked outsiders out, reserved innovation to themselves, so outsiders invented a future without Microsoft.
Microsoft is just as evil and self-grazing as before, only now their lockin and shoddy software aren't nearly as important. The frog king didn't change, neither did the size of his pond. But outside their pond are oceans they don't control. Smart phone, IoT, clouds -- all of it outside their grasp, and ironically enough, by their doing.
Posted Jun 4, 2018 16:05 UTC (Mon)
by abraxis (guest, #34961)
[Link] (9 responses)
Posted Jun 5, 2018 11:42 UTC (Tue)
by excors (subscriber, #95769)
[Link] (8 responses)
Embracing standards is, by itself, a good thing. Claiming that it's eventually going to be followed by the bad Es in the indeterminate future is an unfalsifiable statement, so that doesn't seem a very productive argument, especially when the main evidence is that it was a strategy they attempted twenty years ago which didn't even work properly (HTML standards and non-IE browsers eventually won). They deserve criticism for bad things they do, but it seems unreasonable to criticise them for doing good things just because it's possible they might do a bad thing later.
Posted Jun 8, 2018 5:46 UTC (Fri)
by marcH (subscriber, #57642)
[Link] (7 responses)
Nations around the world routinely slaughter each other because of things their ancestors did centuries ago. So come on, twenty years is like yesterday. Nothing can have possibly changed in such a short time.
Posted Jun 8, 2018 23:18 UTC (Fri)
by Wol (subscriber, #4433)
[Link] (6 responses)
I don't know your nationality, but if you're a USian, the independence story is quite a myth. 1776 and all that was a bunch of revolutionaries trying to whip up independence fever. MOST Americans were against independence (and that "no taxation without representation" malarkey - well ALL of those taxes went to pay for the American army defending *America* against the French and Spanish). It was only after some massacre about 1780 that public opinion was successfully turned against Britain.
I'm British (I consider myself Scottish) and if you look at the history of both Scotland and Ireland well, I think you'll find "popular history" and the facts bear precious little resemblance to each other. The Scots hate "the Sassenach English" - well - to be a Sassenach you have to be a Scot ... :-) The IRA was founded mostly by *Protestants*! Queen Victoria was painted as anti-Irish, but apparently she was the single largest individual donor to the Irish Famine relief fund ... The Irish were very anti-Independence, anti-IRA, until again the Brits messed up and executed the 1916 rebels - if they hadn't done that Ireland would quite likely still be part of the United Kingdom.
And going back a lot further, "Joan of Arc liberated France from the English" - well that's historical bullshit. She conquered Normandy for the French! Not knowing my French history much of what I'm saying won't be that accurate, but the facts are England was conquered by the Normans, and the position "Duke of Normandy" was actually of far higher status than that of "King of England". Until Joan conquered Normandy. To the best of my knowledge, "France" was originally the "Isle de France" - the little area round Paris. That expanded and claimed all of Roman Gaul as its territory, hence its claims on Normandy. But the reality is that Normandy was almost certainly never actually French until after Joan won it.
Something else just as controversial - "Las Malvinas" was British before Argentina even existed! The aboriginal (ie very first) settlers there were British. How on earth can Argentina have a claim on a place that was *settled* (NOT *colonised*) by another nation before they even existed.
History is written by the victors. Never forget that. "Reality" is usually a myth, indeed it's almost always propaganda, especially where the past is concerned.
Cheers,
Posted Jun 8, 2018 23:54 UTC (Fri)
by marcH (subscriber, #57642)
[Link] (3 responses)
I lived in Ireland for a few years and every museum and other "serious" source I saw was quite honest about that.
Yes there's a lot of propaganda but not everything is "fake news". It's a currently very effective technique to pretend that everything is - because then anything goes.
Posted Jun 9, 2018 20:32 UTC (Sat)
by paulj (subscriber, #341)
[Link] (2 responses)
Wol is right that executing the 1916 rebels was a turning point. The 1916 rebellion never had a chance of succeeding militarily, its strategic goal was precisely to provoke a cruel reaction from the English government and awake the Irish population. It succeeded in that.
Before that, had the English government granted the - overwhelming - desire the Irish people had for Home Rule (i.e., a devolved government in Dublin, while in the UK), as indicated by their voting in the Irish Parliament for Parnell and the Irish Parliamentary Party, then the 1916 rebellion would probably never have happened.
This is all covered in required Irish history classes in secondary school.
It's the English who are generally utterly unaware of the history of what they've done to their immediate neighbours - they never get taught any of this in school (which is very narrow in England, the A-level system lets you get through the last couple of years of school with literally just a couple of subjects).
Posted Jun 10, 2018 13:41 UTC (Sun)
by Wol (subscriber, #4433)
[Link]
Not "the English", you mean those taught the English curriculum. My dad was English, I've lived in England all my life, as far as I'm concerned I'm Scottish/German. Nationality is a complicated thing ...
Which is why I've *tried* to give myself a decent education about *British* history. Unfortunately, as you say, once we get past 1066 the English curriculum just forgets about Scotland and Ireland - and Wales to a large extent too :-(
Cheers,
Posted Jun 10, 2018 14:00 UTC (Sun)
by paulj (subscriber, #341)
[Link]
Posted Jun 9, 2018 0:56 UTC (Sat)
by excors (subscriber, #95769)
[Link] (1 responses)
That seems an odd example, since US and British people don't routinely slaughter each other nowadays. As far as I've seen, British people simply don't care about US independence - it's a totally insignificant historical footnote, ranking slightly below Henry VIII's horse winch in terms of interest. So it is perfectly possible to get along happily without holding grudges, or at least to be unhappy based just on current bad behaviour, and that seems like a preferable way of living.
Posted Jun 9, 2018 10:40 UTC (Sat)
by nix (subscriber, #2304)
[Link]
Posted Jun 4, 2018 23:50 UTC (Mon)
by jd (guest, #26381)
[Link] (3 responses)
How has Skype come along since being bought? I remember using I internet Phone in 1995, and it was better than Skype is today. If Microsoft was so good, why hasn't that changed?
Nokia was extinguished, agreed?
Are the Linux kernels that run under Windows correctly marked as tainted (since they're linked to a closed-source environment)? If not, then whether or not it's legal, Microsoft are showing contempt for the GPL.
Why is Windows 10 still in violation of EU antitrust laws?
Why is Microsoft-submitted code to the kernel the primary source of the reduced stability and reduced security of Linux.
Microsoft bribed ISO into giving their document format a standard. International corruption for the sole purpose of destroying open document formats. Once they succeeded, they dropped the standard. A classic manoeuvre.
They PAID Munich and the United Kingdom to switch from open formats to theirs. Bribery and corruption doesn't qualify as a new strategy.
Why has Microsoft focussed on claiming to be different from before (when there's no evidence they are) rather than either apologizing for the past or doing something about it?
I see no evidence of change. I see only an international crime syndicate.
Posted Jun 5, 2018 1:29 UTC (Tue)
by JanC_ (guest, #34940)
[Link]
Why do you think they are running Linux kernels under Windows? WSL works by re-implementing linux syscalls using Windows kernel functionality. It's not dissimilar to how WINE implements the Win32/Win64 APIs.
Posted Jun 5, 2018 3:06 UTC (Tue)
by pr1268 (guest, #24648)
[Link]
That's a Granted, I have just as much disdain for Microsoft as you apparently do, perhaps even more, and I do agree with your other points, but that claim in particular seems odd. And besides, seeing how the senior Linux developers have final say on what gets added to the kernel, then we (the Linux community) would only have ourselves to blame for this "reduced stability".
Posted Jun 14, 2018 21:55 UTC (Thu)
by flussence (guest, #85566)
[Link]
On the other hand, a large part of the next update is in cleaning up internals to make it more sane for modders, the bugfix list in each version is always a mile long, and the original Java version is still the most complete, even though evil old MS would have every reason to abandon or shut it down - not least of which is nobody's friend Oracle.
And considering releases tend to break all third-party mod support while the reverse-engineers catch up — which was the case before Microsoft took over — I feel like less frequent updates is a good thing too.
MS has ruined a lot of acquisitions, but they've been mercifully hands-off with Mojang (and at the start I thoroughly expected them to ruin it too). I don't disagree with the rest of your post though.
Posted Jun 4, 2018 14:54 UTC (Mon)
by jcm (subscriber, #18262)
[Link] (25 responses)
Come on folks, I know the above comments were inevitable but at some point we have to accept Microsoft is capable of changing for the better. They're /nothing/ like the old Microsoft. They won't:
1. Shut it all down just to spite us
Nothing is going to change, except hopefully the negative opinions that (while rightly formed years ago) need to move with the times. In a cloud centric world, Microsoft has more to gain from FLOSS than by fighting it. It's all about Azure, and Azure means Linux.
Posted Jun 4, 2018 15:07 UTC (Mon)
by abraxis (guest, #34961)
[Link]
This leopard hasn't changed its spots, it's merely learned how to camouflage them a little better. The bad stuff will happen.
Posted Jun 4, 2018 15:09 UTC (Mon)
by JFlorian (guest, #49650)
[Link]
Posted Jun 4, 2018 15:21 UTC (Mon)
by Wol (subscriber, #4433)
[Link] (9 responses)
And as for saying "they've changed", what's just happened now on my Windows 10 laptop? It's configured to dual-boot, and the upgrade has just trashed the Windows config that's required to let linux boot!
By default, Windows assumes that "if you click the shutdown button you don't really want to shut down". Firstly, I get rather pissed off at systems that don't do what I tell them, and secondly if Windows DOESN'T shut down properly, it breaks linux boot and causes it to crash into a systemd recovery console.
Sorry MS, but until you start *respecting* *my* *wishes*, I'm not going to trust you an inch!!! And don't overwrite all my settings on an upgrade - it breaks my system!!!
(Oh, and what's that about the browser again? Windows insists on using Edge even if it's not the default, and it won't let me set Firefox to be the default, either!)
Cheers,
Posted Jun 4, 2018 17:41 UTC (Mon)
by jra (subscriber, #55261)
[Link] (7 responses)
I once had a discussion with Linus on when Microsoft would move to the Windows API being a shim on top of Linux. We both thought it would happen by 2020. That's a bit aggressive, but I can still see it happening by 2030.
Microsoft is staring at a future world where Windows is *irrelevant*. It's been that way for me for nearly 20 years now. I simply don't care what Windows does, I never have to use it. This is becoming more common for more and more people. They're not stupid, and they're changing in the ways they need to change to survive this terrifying (for them :-) new age.
Posted Jun 4, 2018 20:49 UTC (Mon)
by eru (subscriber, #2753)
[Link] (2 responses)
I don't think so. My impression is they inter-operate with and even support Linux on the cloud, because there Linux already rules, but they still are fighting tooth and nail to keep their near-monopoly on the desktop and in office software. If you scratch any of their offerings that purportedly support Linux in the office, like Office365, you will find thing never quite work fully unless your OS is Windows. And then there is AIP, Azure Information Protection, which is like file format lock-in on steroids. Nothing except MS Office opens an AIP-protected document (not even the web interface of Office365). Microsoft holds the keys. And organizations are rushing into this in the name of security.
Posted Jun 4, 2018 21:21 UTC (Mon)
by Cyberax (✭ supporter ✭, #52523)
[Link] (1 responses)
The PC market is shrinking and MS so far has failed to gain any foothold on phones or tablets. It's clear that they won't be able to dictate the market direction anymore.
I haven't seen anyone use AIP, but I guess it might be present in some brain-dead companies.
Posted Jun 5, 2018 4:44 UTC (Tue)
by eru (subscriber, #2753)
[Link]
Nothing is wrong with the computer, and I actually do use Office365 on Linux+Chromium all the time at work. I did not say it does not work, but there are missing features and worse user experience. "Teams" keeps nagging me to install the native client, the other day I found sometimes certain attachments just could not be downloaded from webmail, the webmail user experience generally being inferior to the native client, AIP-protected mails and documents unviewable. etc. Office365 keeps subtly reminding you that you are using the wrong OS.
I guess there really are units within Microsoft that are enthusiastic about Linux and open source, but the parts of Microsoft that make Windows and Office are not among them.
I haven't seen anyone use AIP, but I guess it might be present in some brain-dead companies
You can expect to see more of it. Microsoft is pushing it as their solution for securing documents and mails, and organizations, spooked by the famous email leaks and concerns about corporate espionage, are likely to take the bait. After all, they are already using Microsoft office tools, and using AIP with them is very easy for the end-user. But it now locks out LibreOffice and other free office software. I have heard there is a MS SDK for integrating AIP with other software, but I have not looked at that and cannot say if using it with free software would be feasible. In any case the whole system depends on Microsoft holding the keys.
Posted Jun 4, 2018 22:00 UTC (Mon)
by evad (subscriber, #60553)
[Link] (3 responses)
...meanwhile, Microsoft has /actually/ created a Linux API shim on top of Windows, and is working to get developers to use it.
Are you sure its a different company?
Posted Jun 5, 2018 7:56 UTC (Tue)
by Cyberax (✭ supporter ✭, #52523)
[Link]
In particular, Microsoft has completely given up on IoT and networking devices. I wouldn’t be surprised if they give up on Windows Server next, after all, they already have MSSQL for Linux.
Posted Jun 6, 2018 9:34 UTC (Wed)
by jra (subscriber, #55261)
[Link] (1 responses)
In that world, watch for resources being given to the Wine project to keep legacy Win32 applications alive where Linux is the only continuously developed kernel.
Posted Jun 6, 2018 17:54 UTC (Wed)
by raven667 (subscriber, #5198)
[Link]
Posted Jun 27, 2018 14:15 UTC (Wed)
by ghane (guest, #1805)
[Link]
> By default, Windows assumes that "if you click the shutdown button you don't really want to shut down". Firstly, I get rather pissed off at systems that don't do what I tell them, and secondly if Windows DOESN'T shut down properly, it breaks linux boot and causes it to crash into a systemd recovery console.
You can disable "Fast Shutdown", and Reboot always does a full shutdown.
Fast Shutdown basically discards (by logging out) the user session, but hibernates the kernel. So at startup, the kernel does not need to re-enumerate devices and set them up. And the hibernate file is quite small.
I dual boot, and the only issue I see when I shutdown Windows, and later boot up Linux (not *reboot* Windows) is that the shared NTFS data partition is mounted read-only by Linux. This is because the kernel (in Windows) is saving state in its internal structures about the partition, and not unmounting it, so Linux sees a not-cleanly-unmouted filesystem,
This is a design call, and I understand this is not what you expected, but I _did_ read the Windows 10 what-has-changed file, and so this was not a surprise. Please see this URL, eg, if you wish to change the default behaviour. There is a nice GUI to get your desired behaviour.
https://www.windowscentral.com/how-disable-windows-10-fas...
(And I am on Windows Insider, so I get weekly-or-so upgrades, but I have not had a problem with Windows refusing to let me have Firefox Beta as my default. This is despite both Windows and Firefox being upgraded randomly a couple of times a month).
--
Posted Jun 4, 2018 16:04 UTC (Mon)
by ballombe (subscriber, #9523)
[Link] (12 responses)
Posted Jun 4, 2018 16:24 UTC (Mon)
by edeloget (subscriber, #88392)
[Link] (2 responses)
On github, as long as they don't nag me with stupid things, I won't move my repos from there. The service is robust and works well and of change of owner does not make it less functional and robust.
Posted Jun 4, 2018 16:46 UTC (Mon)
by ehiggs (subscriber, #90713)
[Link] (1 responses)
Posted Jun 4, 2018 17:53 UTC (Mon)
by Cyberax (✭ supporter ✭, #52523)
[Link]
Posted Jun 5, 2018 11:05 UTC (Tue)
by cbcbcb (subscriber, #10350)
[Link] (8 responses)
Posted Jun 5, 2018 11:20 UTC (Tue)
by Wol (subscriber, #4433)
[Link] (7 responses)
From what I gather the new Nokia CEO (the ex-MS one) basically burnt the 90%-profitable-r.o.w.-Nokia trying to improve the unprofitable-10%-US-Nokia.
Read the stats - apparently before he took over, Nokia's market share was *growing*, and their conversion rate dumb->smartphones was better than anyone else's. Despite Apple owning the US market, and Samsung doing pretty well, Nokia was growing faster than the pair of them combined.
But all the CEO could see was that Apple owned the US, and he burnt the rest of the company to try and unseat them.
Cheers,
Posted Jun 5, 2018 12:23 UTC (Tue)
by nhippi (subscriber, #34640)
[Link] (6 responses)
https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:World-Wide-Smartp...
The graph also misses the point that lots of people bought high-end nokia phones without being aware they were smartphones. Very few app installs on symbian phones compared to the market share they commanded.
Microsoft may indeed screw up github. But if they had continued independent, one day they would have to become cash-positive, and it would have lead to github looking like sourceforge.net looks like without an adblocker...
Posted Jun 5, 2018 21:06 UTC (Tue)
by Wol (subscriber, #4433)
[Link] (5 responses)
Are you telling me that "Nokia == Symbian"? Maybe. I dunno. Was Nokia moving over to Android?
But a graph of *operating systems* tells me absolutely nothing about *hardware*.
Cheers,
Posted Jun 5, 2018 21:42 UTC (Tue)
by halla (subscriber, #14185)
[Link]
Posted Jul 7, 2018 0:31 UTC (Sat)
by Tv (guest, #7109)
[Link] (3 responses)
My conspiracy theory at the time was that the whole line of Linux products was never allowed to go beyond prototypes because of the existing stake in Symbian and perhaps some legalese about "being committed to" Symbian for N years that they signed with their partners.
Posted Jul 8, 2018 13:57 UTC (Sun)
by jem (subscriber, #24231)
[Link] (2 responses)
There were rumours of a Nokia Android phone. If there ever was one, it never got out of the prototype stage. The current Nokia Android phones are made by another company, and Nokia only licences the name.
And yes, Nokia as a company still exists. Contrary to popular belief, Microsoft did not kill Nokia, only the mobile phone division.
Posted Jul 8, 2018 14:35 UTC (Sun)
by tao (subscriber, #17563)
[Link]
The planned US launch of the N9 was cancelled because Elop wanted to focus on Windows phone only.
Posted Jul 23, 2018 3:09 UTC (Mon)
by Tv (guest, #7109)
[Link]
Posted Jun 4, 2018 16:44 UTC (Mon)
by adam820 (subscriber, #101353)
[Link]
It's interesting to me how short some memories seem to be these days regarding MS' ill-will towards FOSS and Linux; VSCode might be a great tool, but it doesn't somehow wipe away 20+ years of trying to hold back open-anything. You can't buy street cred, as they say. As others have said, the good things they're doing are great and any cultural shift towards open is fantastic, but don't become complacent lest you suddenly look up and find yourself surrounded. On the flip side, MS could be the thing GitHub needs to improve, and a little competition from GitLab can help keep everyone honest, maybe. Walk softly...
Posted Jun 4, 2018 18:00 UTC (Mon)
by LightBit (guest, #88716)
[Link] (3 responses)
Posted Jun 4, 2018 18:05 UTC (Mon)
by SEJeff (guest, #51588)
[Link] (2 responses)
https://about.gitlab.com/2016/07/20/gitlab-is-open-core-g...
Posted Jun 5, 2018 7:08 UTC (Tue)
by andrewsh (subscriber, #71043)
[Link] (1 responses)
Posted Jun 5, 2018 19:24 UTC (Tue)
by xtifr (guest, #143)
[Link]
Still better than Github--at least as far as freedom is concerned--but a blanket claim that Gitlab is open source is a bit misleading.
But in any case, a quick browse of news headlines suggests that Gitlab is indeed doing quite well on the heels of the Github acquisition. :)
Posted Jun 4, 2018 18:15 UTC (Mon)
by jdulaney (subscriber, #83672)
[Link] (5 responses)
Posted Jun 4, 2018 18:21 UTC (Mon)
by pizza (subscriber, #46)
[Link] (4 responses)
Posted Jun 4, 2018 22:41 UTC (Mon)
by Garak (guest, #99377)
[Link] (2 responses)
Posted Jun 4, 2018 23:06 UTC (Mon)
by Garak (guest, #99377)
[Link] (1 responses)
also, as pwner of github.com M$ I presume gets to harvest much more than what at present is exposed by the public APIs. I.e. they get to harvest the full server access logs, and deleted/closed accounts/repos/etc. I'm sure there is also a lot of wiggle room in the existing terms of service that might be leveraged by the site owner. Usually is.
Posted Jun 5, 2018 1:39 UTC (Tue)
by JanC_ (guest, #34940)
[Link]
Posted Jun 5, 2018 13:51 UTC (Tue)
by jebba (guest, #4439)
[Link]
This is false. They have a *LOT* more info about all of us now. They have all the internal logs with IPs, referrals, etc., for example... Which they can also match with their other services they have to more fully profile us.
Posted Jun 4, 2018 20:52 UTC (Mon)
by zblaxell (subscriber, #26385)
[Link] (1 responses)
Recently, Github was a closed service that publishes git repos and provides some feedback collection infrastructure in exchange for promotional opportunities and access to big mounds of already-public user data. Currently, Github is still all of that. Some people didn't like Github for those reasons before, and that's only changed now in a strictly quantitative sense.
The thing to do is recognize that redundancy is better than no redundancy and that users make choices we can do nothing about. So fire up extra project instances on two or three of whatever viable competitors there are, and get used to running 'git push' inside a shell for-loop ('git remote update' already handles pulling down multiple git services at once quite nicely) so that people who won't use one service or the other are still reachable.
Mirrors are good, advertising is a reasonable way to pay for service, and opting out usually hurts nobody but the opter (a few high-risk projects excepted, but those should already not be on github).
Posted Jun 4, 2018 21:44 UTC (Mon)
by TomH (subscriber, #56149)
[Link]
Posted Jun 5, 2018 5:49 UTC (Tue)
by pabs (subscriber, #43278)
[Link] (10 responses)
Posted Jun 5, 2018 7:27 UTC (Tue)
by paulj (subscriber, #341)
[Link] (9 responses)
I've seen very large global corporations flip away from support of open-source, just based on *one* person leaving the company (the CTO). Turned out the CTO was the only top-level person who felt open-source was good, and holding back the more hostile views of large swathes of lower level management.
That blog states: "Although it’s a fairly recent convert, Microsoft is now among these because it’s clearly visible how its conversion from desktop to cloud both requires open source and requires Microsoft to play nicely with open source.". That's an assertion without justifying evidence or argument though. I don't see much reason why MS is /required/ to play nice with open-source at all because of cloud...
Posted Jun 5, 2018 7:29 UTC (Tue)
by paulj (subscriber, #341)
[Link] (3 responses)
Posted Jun 6, 2018 10:05 UTC (Wed)
by nix (subscriber, #2304)
[Link] (2 responses)
Posted Jun 5, 2018 8:39 UTC (Tue)
by marcH (subscriber, #57642)
[Link] (4 responses)
I think that comment wasn't specific to Microsoft.
Peter Bright has (as often) a good and balanced piece:
Posted Jun 5, 2018 10:31 UTC (Tue)
by excors (subscriber, #95769)
[Link]
Posted Jun 11, 2018 6:30 UTC (Mon)
by Nemo_bis (guest, #88187)
[Link] (2 responses)
It makes however a very USA-centric assumption about what companies to consider. It only takes a look at https://www.linuxfoundation.org/membership/members/ to find a broader picture. Alibaba or Tencent would be big enough.
Posted Jun 12, 2018 1:48 UTC (Tue)
by marcH (subscriber, #57642)
[Link] (1 responses)
Posted Jun 12, 2018 12:16 UTC (Tue)
by Wol (subscriber, #4433)
[Link]
Okay, the Eastern mentality doesn't seem to work that well with the kernel, but I think they have a fair few projects of their own.
I think you're involved in Western projects, that tend to attract westerners, and missing the bigger picture.
Cheers,
Posted Jun 6, 2018 15:25 UTC (Wed)
by clugstj (subscriber, #4020)
[Link] (8 responses)
Posted Jun 6, 2018 16:49 UTC (Wed)
by adam820 (subscriber, #101353)
[Link] (1 responses)
For most people not in the tech industry, GitHub == git.
Posted Jun 6, 2018 17:06 UTC (Wed)
by halla (subscriber, #14185)
[Link]
Posted Jun 6, 2018 17:04 UTC (Wed)
by halla (subscriber, #14185)
[Link]
Posted Jun 6, 2018 17:44 UTC (Wed)
by raven667 (subscriber, #5198)
[Link] (4 responses)
The https://github.com/Microsoft group seems to have 1800 public repos with nearly 4000 contributors, open source won and now MS is one of us, the old guard and old cutthroat, proprietary attitudes are a minority at MS as those people retired and were replaced with people who grew up with Linux and open source, for example several of the early developers of the GNOME project.
Posted Jun 7, 2018 12:27 UTC (Thu)
by clugstj (subscriber, #4020)
[Link] (3 responses)
Posted Jun 7, 2018 14:18 UTC (Thu)
by excors (subscriber, #95769)
[Link]
Posted Jun 7, 2018 16:21 UTC (Thu)
by eru (subscriber, #2753)
[Link] (1 responses)
A good explanation for the crazy price here:
https://hbr.org/2018/06/why-microsoft-is-willing-to-pay-so-much-for-github
Microsoft sees "strategic value" in Github.
Posted Jun 8, 2018 12:10 UTC (Fri)
by clugstj (subscriber, #4020)
[Link]
Posted Jun 6, 2018 17:52 UTC (Wed)
by karkhaz (subscriber, #99844)
[Link] (2 responses)
I'm sure anybody here can name upteen companies that have a very similar business model to GitHub: having a free-to-use "community" edition, plus an enterprise offering. The idea seems to be: ensure that your service becomes the de-facto implementation of---and synonymous with---some open standard. Docker _is_ containers, Travis _is_ CI, GitHub _is_ git, etc.
So much more of the developers' toolbox is comprised of Free software than would have been possible a few decades ago, which is wonderful. Yet, to more or less of an extent, the _infrastructure_ behind the toolbox is at the mercy of for-profit companies.
How much of a problem this is depends on the company. I'd argue that GitHub being the de-facto Git is not the worst thing in the world, because if Microsoft does run it into the ground (either strategically, or because their management are a herd of momes), GitHub doesn't actually contribute that much to Git development. Contrast that with (hypothetically) Docker being bought by $COMPANY and then being left to stagnate. Docker (the infrastructure) is also the primary developer of Docker (the tool). Imagine how many hours of lost productivity would ensue while people migrate to an alternative---especially in cases where there isn't an alternative, because the de-facto implementation becomes a monopoly.
The reason why I think all this is significant is precisely because all of these "new infrastructure" companies have the same business model, and in GitHub's case, that model was obviously a failure. So it's now prudent to ask: is GitHub's acquisition a fluke, or will their fate be shared by many more of those companies? Did GitHub fail to make money because of GitHub-specific management failures, or is the entire business model---that other companies also have---impossible to make work?
I'm not foolhardy enough to venture an answer to that question. But now seems a good time to tabulate all the shiny open-standard-as-a-service type offerings that we rely on, and for each one, think about the impact of that company being acquired by, say, Oracle.
Posted Jun 7, 2018 3:12 UTC (Thu)
by pabs (subscriber, #43278)
[Link]
Posted Jun 8, 2018 16:28 UTC (Fri)
by newren (subscriber, #5160)
[Link]
Upon what do you base this assertion?
Their employees often contributed to git before becoming GitHub employees, and continue contributing with whatever email address they had before which may make it difficult to determine contribution sources, but they employ some significant contributors. In fact, that seems to be somewhat common with git contributors. Of the top 15 or so contributors to git (obtained via `git shortlog -sne origin/master`), only Linus' email address hints at an employer. I see several that last I heard were GitHub or Google or Microsoft employees, but there are several whose employer I don't know. Two of the top ten are or were GitHub employees, and I think a third is (and there's a fourth from Microsoft if you want to count that now), and there may be more.
Posted Jun 8, 2018 12:34 UTC (Fri)
by Felix.Braun (guest, #3032)
[Link] (2 responses)
Posted Jun 8, 2018 15:02 UTC (Fri)
by pabs (subscriber, #43278)
[Link] (1 responses)
Posted Jun 11, 2018 5:37 UTC (Mon)
by Nemo_bis (guest, #88187)
[Link]
Microsoft acquires GitHub
Microsoft acquires GitHub
Microsoft acquires GitHub
>
> Github is not open source.
Microsoft acquires GitHub
Gitea...
Gitea...
Redmine
Microsoft acquires GitHub
Microsoft acquires GitHub
Microsoft acquires GitHub
Microsoft acquires GitHub
Microsoft acquires GitHub
> to Windows and Visual Studio full.
start using Windows and Visual Studio?
Microsoft acquires GitHub
Microsoft acquires GitHub
Microsoft acquires GitHub
Microsoft acquires GitHub
Microsoft acquires GitHub
Microsoft acquires GitHub
Microsoft acquires GitHub
Microsoft acquires GitHub
Microsoft acquires GitHub
Microsoft acquires GitHub
Microsoft acquires GitHub
Wol
Microsoft acquires GitHub
Microsoft acquires GitHub
Wol
Microsoft acquires GitHub
Microsoft acquires GitHub
Microsoft acquires GitHub
Microsoft acquires GitHub
Microsoft acquires GitHub
Microsoft acquires GitHub
Microsoft acquires GitHub
(on the other hand, MS management may still shoot themselves in the foot, like with Windows phone 10 - writing this on the last Lumia I will ever use).
Microsoft acquires GitHub
Microsoft acquires GitHub
> However, today people (and small companies) expect and rely on a central repo server running "out there" for free.
Microsoft acquires GitHub
Microsoft acquires GitHub
Microsoft acquires GitHub
Microsoft acquires GitHub
Microsoft acquires GitHub
Microsoft acquires GitHub
Microsoft acquires GitHub
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> ...
> And it was all expressed in a fairly civil way, mind you
Microsoft acquires GitHub
Same Old Strategy...
Same Old Strategy...
Same Old Strategy...
Same Old Strategy...
Same Old Strategy...
Same Old Strategy...
Same Old Strategy...
Wol
Same Old Strategy...
Same Old Strategy...
Same Old Strategy...
Wol
Same Old Strategy...
Same Old Strategy...
>
> I don't know your nationality, but if you're a USian, the independence story is quite a myth.
Same Old Strategy...
Same Old Strategy...
Same Old Strategy...
Are the Linux kernels that run under Windows correctly marked as tainted (since they're linked to a closed-source environment)?
Reduced stability and reduced security?
Why is Microsoft-submitted code to the kernel the primary source of the reduced stability and reduced security of Linux.
bold statement big generalization. Can you substantiate that claim?Same Old Strategy...
The release rate slowed down a bit, the website got uglier, they're pushing a !@&^ing Electron-based login app now, and the server is now inexplicably 70-80% bundled bloat (it worked fine without 20+MB of com.google.* and data type munging classes before…).
Microsoft acquires GitHub
2. Make us use some Microsoft-Windows AD login
3. Nefariously steal private repos
4. Embrace and Extend the git protocols to add SMB
5. Insert other inane BS here
Microsoft acquires GitHub
Microsoft acquires GitHub
Microsoft acquires GitHub
Wol
Microsoft acquires GitHub
Microsoft is staring at a future world where Windows is *irrelevant*.
The two Microsofts
The two Microsofts
I don't know what's wrong with your computer, but here we're using Office 365 on Firefox on Linux just fine.
The two Microsofts
Microsoft acquires GitHub
Microsoft acquires GitHub
Microsoft acquires GitHub
Microsoft acquires GitHub
Windows 10 Fast Shutdown
Sanjeev
Microsoft acquires GitHub
Microsoft acquires GitHub
Microsoft acquires GitHub
Microsoft acquires GitHub
Microsoft acquires GitHub
Microsoft acquires GitHub
Wol
Microsoft acquires GitHub
Microsoft acquires GitHub
Wol
Microsoft acquires GitHub
Was Nokia moving over to Android?
Was Nokia moving over to Android?
Was Nokia moving over to Android?
Was Nokia moving over to Android?
"Walk softly and carry a big export button."Microsoft acquires GitHub
Microsoft acquires GitHub
https://confluence.atlassian.com/get-started-with-bitbuck...
Microsoft acquires GitHub
Microsoft acquires GitHub
Microsoft acquires GitHub
Microsoft acquires GitHub
Microsoft acquires GitHub
financially motivated throttle control / github neutrality
financially motivated throttle control / github neutrality
financially motivated throttle control / github neutrality
Microsoft acquires GitHub
Microsoft acquires GitHub
Microsoft acquires GitHub
Microsoft acquires GitHub
Microsoft acquires GitHub
Microsoft acquires GitHub
Microsoft acquires GitHub
Microsoft acquires GitHub
https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2018/06/everyone-complain...
Microsoft acquires GitHub
Microsoft acquires GitHub
Microsoft acquires GitHub
Microsoft acquires GitHub
Wol
Microsoft acquires GitHub
Microsoft acquires GitHub
Microsoft acquires GitHub
Microsoft acquires GitHub
Microsoft acquires GitHub
Microsoft acquires GitHub
Microsoft acquires GitHub
it's 7.5 Billion Dollars!
Microsoft acquires GitHub
Microsoft acquires GitHub
Microsoft acquires GitHub
Microsoft acquires GitHub
Microsoft acquires GitHub
The Linux Foundation's Reaction
The Linux Foundation's Reaction
The Linux Foundation's Reaction
