Apache Software Foundation moves to GitHub

A free and open source foundation should insist on using free and open source software for its own infrastructure. There are good widely used alternatives to Github in that regard.

For me, it's about control: giving the end users as much control of their digital lives as possible. That's why I'm "in it". That's why I still prefer spelling it "free software" and why I tend to prefer copyleft licenses.

If that's your take too, there are many reasons to dislike Microsoft. They're lobbying the EU commission at a tune of 5 million euro a year [1]. They're using their market power to infiltrate every school and public administration and doing everything to keep them dependent. They use underhanded tactics to "convince" (I'd call it "buy") city mayors. They have a big clout when convincing decision makers -- that has been their business model for quite a while now.

Now, of course, they're trying to grab as much control of "the cloud" as they can. Azure is somewhat successful with those corporations already deeply dependent on Microsoft -- otherwise Amazon has taken their cake. That's why the takeover of Github makes sense for them!

This all results in taking control from end users, because that's how Microsoft's business works.

Of course if your take on "open source" is different, those points might not be as important to you.

[1] https://taz.de/Inoffizielle-EU-Hauptstadt-Bruessel/!5588192/
Sorry, source in German

They funded the SCO lawsuit, which bound an incredible amount of our resources and our time.

Sure, it takes a bit of configuration for that last one, but at least it's relatively straightforward. The Debian BTS controls don't need much in way of software to do your reporting, but you need to learn a new DSL, which in my book isn't exactly user-friendly either :-)

Both of those are also true of Github, which is the comparison you replied to.

If I hadn't come to it because of your comment I'd have been completely in the dark until the last comment. Perfect deadpanning of the Apache Way at its most procedural. The only thing it missed was a formal vote actually in the Jira thread.

(Though libsvn_ra_git was, AIUI, not a joke.)

Obviously open implementations are better, but specifications with proprietary implementations can be OK, as long as the implementation follows the specification.
In the MS Word case, as you say, it does not so the problem is more there rather than the implementation being closed.

But to have a decent chance of an implementation being conformant to a specification there really needs to be a machine executable compatibility test suite, available in a form suitable for free software use. It's very hard to correctly implement a non trivial specification just from the natural language form, which inevitably misses out some corner cases.