On Fri, 20 Aug 2021 12:41:10 +1000, Chris Cason wrote:

> On 20/08/2021 11:45, Jim Henderson wrote:
>> (But yes, Microsoft does now own Github)
> 
> Which is a good thing, in a way. While I'm not a great fan of Microsoft,
> they do seem to be keeping their fingers out of interfering with github,
> which makes perfect sense when you think of it.

Yeah, they do seem to have done that.  I've also never been a big fan of 
Microsoft (though I now live in the Seattle area, and I know a lot of 
people who used to work there, and a few, I think, who still do).  The 
company's changed a lot since Ballmer left.  He was a big part of the 
last vestiges of Gates' time there.

> Some of us will remember the time that SourceForge was the place for
> open-source projects to host public repositories, and will also know
> what happened when SF got sold to someone who didn't really care about
> software but just wanted to make a quick buck regardless of the damage
> done.
>
> [...]
>
> See
> https://www.howtogeek.com/218764/warning-don%E2%80%99t-download-
software-from-sourceforge-if-you-can-help-it/
> if you're interested in more background on what happened to SF.

Oh, yes, I had forgotten about that.  Before SourceForge, it was 
freshmeat.net, but that was more an aggregator than a host for the 
software, as I recall.

> Now someone may wonder how this relates to a discussion about GitHub and
> its ownership, and my answer is that it relates a *lot*. GitHub isn't
> unique; it's not created or run by the makers of Git. it's just a
> open-source software hosting site - like SourceForge is/was.
> 
> Microsoft bought it because they saw it as a good investment as it had
> become a popular destination for OSS projects and their own OSS host
> (CodePlex) wasn't doing nearly as well (and in fact they since shut it
> down).
> 
> GitHub (and sites like it) lives and breathes on its *reputation*. While
> it has some neat features (like build automation) the basic technology
> (Git) is portable and as such there's not a lot preventing a project
> just moving somewhere else. Microsoft are well aware of that fact and
> would have to be insane to do anything that would jeopardize their $7bn
> investment in GitHub as almost all of that value is tied up in 'good
> will'.
> 
> Just as importantly they're *also* so cashed up they they are unlikely
> to ever say "we need a few extra dollars, let's sell GitHub" - meaning
> GH is unlikely to ever end up in the hands of anyone who wants to make a
> quick buck regardless of the damage done to the reputation of the site
> (which is what happened to SourceForge).

One friend who used to work at Microsoft described them years ago as 
"circling the drain - but they have a lot of money, so it's going to take 
a long time for them to disappear" (words to that effect).  But I think 
Nadela has embraced open source a lot more (Microsoft has historically 
contributed a fair amount to the Linux Kernel, actually).  Back in the 
day when Novell bought Ximian (who created the open-source Mono project - 
an OSS implementation of .NET), there was a lot of concern about 
Microsoft suing Novell over intellectual property around .NET (I was 
there - worked for Novell for about 8 years, starting right before they 
acquired SUSE in 2003, and leaving when Attachmate bought them in 2011).  
Now Miguel de Icaza is on the board of the .NET foundation, and Nat 
Friedman is the CEO of Github (so he works for Microsoft).

Jim

-- 
"I learned long ago, never to wrestle with a pig. You get dirty, and 
besides, the pig likes it." - George Bernard Shaw

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