[zeusk]

> Why is that? Why should people forget how evil MS was and still is?

I'm not asking for that, but making wild baseless predictions of how the service will go to shitter or how suddenly all private code will be ripped off and "I'm going to gitlab now, because Microsoft sucks!" is not part of a healthy discussion.

I do have some privacy concerns but they're no less than when Github was not owned by an enterprise software company; If anything I'd be more concerned about privacy if it were Google or Facebook making this acquisition.

[zxcvhjkl]

People base their expectations on past performance. And for MS it hasn’t been stellar. But there is no need for speculation; we will wait and see.

The problem is deeper than that though. Unless you were developing an Editor or a Git hosting service, you were not in direct competition with GitHub. Suddenly a lot of startups will find their private code hosted by a direct competitor. I wouldn’t feel comfortable if I was them.

[kickingvegas]

Exactly. GitHub Enterprise under MS rule would be an epic conflict of interest for many customers who currently use it because MS could/would compete with them.

While it's not a complete 1-1 mapping, I keep thinking of Stac Electronics disk compression lawsuit against MS when it comes to handling source code:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stac_Electronics

[chris_wot]

Which makes see the wisdom of Gnome choosing Gitlab.

[laumars]

Gnome is open source though so Microsoft wouldn't need to buy the hosting provider to read it's source.

To be honest, even with regards to private repos, I can't see Microsoft reading the source code because that would be a massive law case waiting to happen. What I'm more concerned about is Microsoft trying to integrate more of their own suite into Github. I'm also concerned about the future of Atom; which I specifically chose over VSC because it wasn't managed by Microsoft.

[gsich]

If you have issues with that, then only self-hosting can save you.

[laumars]

I already self-host personal projects but that is only part of the story since I cannot (and should not) dictate what solutions other people use. A pretty significant proportion of open source projects I have contributed to have been Github hosted so even if I don't use it for personal projects I still will need to use it if I want to continue to contribute to those other projects.

[zeusk]

The same people also host their deployment with some of these corporations, who doesn't use either of AWS, GCP or Azure? Do you also have the same concern that a direct competitor possibly has access to your deployed code, API keys and is also in direct control of your production environment?

Not that because it happens, it is nice; but at-least at this point the source code access concern is more of a conspiracy theory if anything.

[jtbayly]

Yes, major corporations have moved off of AWS for precisely this reason. (edit to clarify: They moved out of concern about a competitor hosting & having too much knowledge about their business.)

[eli]

I'm not personally concerned but some big companies definitely are https://www.retaildive.com/news/report-target-opts-out-of-am...

[oldcynic]

OK I'll avoid iterating the ludicrously long list of Microsoft acquisitions that immediately did go to shit. Often intentionally, like AutoRoute straight after purchase from Nextbase.

All I need do to have concern about this acquisition is look to last year. https://archive.codeplex.com/

How long before they get bored of github then? Codeplex wasn't as good or popular as github, but did seem to have many valid reasons for existence if you were Windows focused. So they killed it.

[sime2009]

Codeplex died because GitHub won. There was little point in keeping Codeplex around especially after MS decided to move their open source stuff to where the developers were, i.e. GitHub.

[feanaro]

> I'm not asking for that, but making wild baseless predictions of how the service will go to shitter or how suddenly all private code will be ripped off and "I'm going to gitlab now, because Microsoft sucks!" is not part of a healthy discussion.

But they're not baseless predictions, they're based on past information and it tells us it would be prudent to minimize reliance of Github sooner rather than later.

[__jack_rabbit__]

I'm not really interested in being part of a "healthy discussion" with Microsoft. There are enough people telling Microsoft about all the things it is doing to make people dislike it.

It knows what these things are. If it wants to stop doing them, then I'm happy to use some of its products. Until then, I'm going to gitlab now, because Microsoft sucks!

[saintPirelli]

> baseless

If the company that ships OS with preinstalled, hidden keyloggers (using that as a pars pro toto) acquires the platform I host my code on, that's not a basis on which to be concerned?

[kbenson]

Are you referring to the issue where the crappily written driver had a keylogger to detect keyboard volume keys, etc, or something else?

If it's the first, that's not exactly Microsoft's fault, in the same way it's not exactly Mocrosoft's fault that if you buy a Dell it might come with McAfee preinstalled.

Although, it could be argued that if the driver was verified, perhaps they should extend their verified driver program to cover that instead of just crash protection. Then again, since the arguments here are centered around not trusting Microsoft with your source code, I can see why they may not require that...

[saintPirelli]

No, I am talking about a literal keylogger actively installed on the OS. To their credit, after it surfaced they now provide a privacy option to "turn it off", but they still pretty much admit to spy on you every chance they get.

https://privacy.microsoft.com/en-us/windows-10-speech-inking...

[balls187]

Do you have examples of Microsoft acquiring technology that was beloved and embraced by it's community and making it better?

MGS did right by Bungie/Halo circa XBox; though Halo hadn't yet been released, and it's initial fanbase were all Marathon fans.

[cm2187]

Xamarin, Minecraft. They are as capable of the best as of the worst.

[krageon]

Minecraft was going in the toilet slowly far before Microsoft acquired them, but the changes they made have not been for the better in my opinion. Xamarin was plainly bad before acquisition, and as far as I've been able to discern this hasn't changed.

[evilmushroom]

it's still bad.

[matheusmoreira]

After what they did to Skype, such predictions are hardly baseless.