Microsoft buys GitHub

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foxpup
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#21 Post by foxpup »

bigpup wrote:Microsoft has to get the free code from someplace.
It is open source already. They have free access like anybody else. Now they pay 7.5 billion! It is not the code they are paying for. They are buying power, the power to decide.

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nosystemdthanks
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#22 Post by nosystemdthanks »

foxpup wrote:They have free access like anybody else.
they also now have the email address and some other details about practically every non-corporate competitor they have on earth.

i mean this is a goldmine for them, and a huge loss for anybody that cares if microsoft runs their infrastructure or not.

if microsoft had simply gone into every github server farm and tossed a bunch of large grenades, it would have a similar effect. instead, they spent 1 percent of the total 785b value of all their shares and they get to keep the whole thing.

if we believe the hype about gdpr, they may eventually have to delete a lot of data on their customers in the eu. the rest they get to keep.

i dont know how large 1% of their market cap really is, in terms of the sort of stuff they acquire.

except they paid a similar amount for nokias handset division in 2013: https://www.computerworld.com/article/2 ... ition.html

woodenshoe-wi
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#23 Post by woodenshoe-wi »

I took the time to read the article that jamesbond wrote and some of the points made.

http://lightofdawn.org/blog/?viewDetailed=00172
The larger a project grows, the more complex it becomes. The more complex it comes, the more experience and skill is needed before somebody can contribute and improve the project. To gain more skill, somebody needs to invest the time and effort; and get themselves familiar with the project and or the relevant technology. Bigger "investment" means less number of people can "afford" it.
This makes me think that the best way to protect FOSS projects is to try to stick to the KISS principle. The smaller, more modular and easier to understand each piece is the greater the likelihood that more people would be capable of understanding and maintaining it.

Theoretically it should be harder to "take over" an operating system made up of independent programs, each maintained by independent individuals or teams, than a large distribution with a large, centralized organization.

Conventional wisdom is that you should avoid "re-inventing the wheel", or dividing efforts by forking projects unnecessarily, but for the sake of independence maybe forking in a manner that both sides of the fork can still benefit from the changes that they can agree on while each being free to continue in the direction that they want to go should be encouraged instead of discouraged.

I don't think "do-ocracy" is the same as meritocracy, and eudev is the perfect example. Just because someone wants a new feature enough to "do" the work necessary to make it happen that doesn't mean everyone thinks the idea has merit. As long as someone with the necessary skills feels eudev has merit for a project that they are working on they will continue to maintain it. It isn't about adding new features, but the right to reject unwanted "features". After all, KISS.

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nosystemdthanks
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#24 Post by nosystemdthanks »

woodenshoe-wi wrote:This makes me think that the best way to protect FOSS projects is to try to stick to the KISS principle. The smaller, more modular and easier to understand each piece is the greater the likelihood that more people would be capable of understanding and maintaining it.

Theoretically it should be harder to "take over" an operating system made up of independent programs, each maintained by independent individuals or teams, than a large distribution with a large, centralized organization.
right. and then, by turning your words into their opposites:



the best way to attack FOSS projects is to try to get away the KISS principle. The larger, less modular and easier to understand each piece is the greater the likelihood that fewer people would be capable of understanding and maintaining it.

this is what james said basically. but if we go to this brian stevens (red hat cto) interview from 2006:
Red Hat's model works because of the complexity of the technology we work with. An operating platform has a lot of moving parts, and customers are willing to pay to be insulated from that complexity.

I don't think you can take one finite element - like Apache - and make a business out of it [ using our model ] . You need product complexity.
http://asay.blogspot.nl/2006/10/intervi ... brian.html



this is what theyve really been doing, and this is what systemd does.
systemd provides aggressive parallelization capabilities, uses socket and D-Bus activation for starting services, offers on-demand starting of daemons, keeps track of processes using Linux control groups, maintains mount and automount points, and implements an elaborate transactional dependency-based service control logic.
https://www.freedesktop.org/wiki/Software/systemd/

its complex to the point of absurdity, and made of many parts that are also complex. and it runs everything else.



the attack on foss (from within) goes beyond this. microsoft (who has numerous deals with red hat, and not just red hat) continues to attack foss by attacking companies that use it: http://techrights.org/category/microsoft/

and then selling "protection" to devlopers like suse and others.

theyre basically shaking down companies that save money avoiding microsoft and demanding to get paid for the right to not be sued over patents.

and then they go and literally take over github. of course they wont do anything to github right away, or probably all at once. but strategically this is important to them.

you cant technically own free software, but you can try, and you can paid for trying (to own and control it.) and thats what microsoft is systematically doing:

trying to gain enough "ownership" of something that belongs to everyone that they can basically tax everything we do and use the money OUR software makes (or saves companies) to fund their attacks on everybody.

these attacks didnt stop when steve stepped down; only the rhetoric changed. theyre still buying up their competition and suing and threatening to sue. all with a ridiculous "<3 linux" slogan on the whole thing.

they even wanted to get a royalty (upheld in germany) on every usb stick that was formatted to work with microsoft windows:

http://lkml.org/lkml/2009/6/26/314

if you dont pay, you get sued-- if you dont want to get sued, you have to spend time writing around your own code to avoid going to court for patent disputes on patents they refuse to even show you. "but we have them!"

the truth is that microsoft has never stopped kicking around free software authors (or commercial users of free software with deep pockets.)

the literally want to own all their competition-- one way or another-- either by buying the company, licensing the technology for cheap, or suing commercial users and vendors of free software.

non-stop, since 2003 at the latest. buying github is not unrelated.

people think this is a non-issue because hardly anyone ever has to pay out in court. but they have to sign things that say "yes, you own this, this is your patent" and companies are shaken down for money, time (and billions of dollars) are wasted in court--

and on top of everything else, it sets back development for literally years.

its a brilliant strategy (15+ years running) for preventing free software from taking over by abusing the legal system and by obvious antitrust violations.

microsoft never changes.

s243a
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#25 Post by s243a »

woodenshoe-wi wrote:It isn't about adding new features, but the right to reject unwanted "features". After all, KISS.
Now if only I could do that with linked in. The website use to be so much simpler!!!...Or for that matter, why does hotmail need four columns??? Is this Microsofts way of telling people with poor eyesite to f off...I thought they alread give the middle finger to the visually impaired with narator!

Sailor Enceladus
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#26 Post by Sailor Enceladus »

s243a wrote:Or for that matter, why does hotmail need four columns??? Is this Microsofts way of telling people with poor eyesite to f off...I thought they alread give the middle finger to the visually impaired with narator!
Yes, on my 1024x768 screen this column layout is impossible to see any message, had to revert out of the "beta" or whatever it was called. Maybe it's an attempt to make people buy a 21:9 or two 16:9 monitors side-by-side just for hotmail.

s243a
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#27 Post by s243a »

Sailor Enceladus wrote:
s243a wrote:Or for that matter, why does hotmail need four columns??? Is this Microsofts way of telling people with poor eyesite to f off...I thought they alread give the middle finger to the visually impaired with narator!
Yes, on my 1024x768 screen this column layout is impossible to see any message, had to revert out of the "beta" or whatever it was called. Maybe it's an attempt to make people buy a 21:9 or two 16:9 monitors side-by-side just for hotmail.
And then are they going to sell you eye surgery for the extra strain on you eyes from all that dam light!?

Maybe we need an ap to invert the colours for the part of the screen that one isn't using!

jamesbond
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#28 Post by jamesbond »

drunkjedi wrote:Good to see you posting, I was wondering were you went. Being busy with life is good though.
Thanks. I've been busy with life, that's right. Got other priorities at the moment; but with the rest of the team, still trying to make time to make a new Fatdog release :)
I read those four posts when you posted, I also tried to comment but I don't know where my comments went.
I'll PM you the details.
I totally agree with what you said.
I was a user and fan of Cyanogen, Microsoft joined then and boom.
That's why I was also worried when I read Microsoft became platinum member of Linux foundation.
And everybody cheered when MS joined because they thought MS has "caved" in. Yeah right.
Waiting for your fifth post.
Will probably have to wait a while because things seems to have changed; and there are some good input around here and food for thoughts that I need to digest and think :)
nosystemdthanks wrote:this is what theyve really been doing, and this is what systemd does.
Indeed, and most people missed the forest for the trees when they talked about journalctl vs /var/log/messages, boot speed improvements, etc. systemd is about control.
the attack on foss (from within) goes beyond this.
Anyone remembers that MS was a guest in Debian 8 launch party? :)
and then selling "protection" to devlopers like suse and others.
Anyone remembers that SCO vs Linux? Remember who was one of the major funders of SCO? Right.
theyre basically shaking down companies that save money avoiding microsoft and demanding to get paid for the right to not be sued over patents.
This is old news, but for some of you who missed it: just do a google of how much MS is being paid for every Android phone every made. Yes, that Android, which uses Linux kernel, and is based on open source (some of the IPs are actually owned by Google). The manufacturers have to pay MS (or get sued - and it's not Google who pays, it's the manufacturers). If you haven't heard the story, guess the amount first before you start googling.
if you dont pay, you get sued-- if you dont want to get sued, you have to spend time writing around your own code to avoid going to court for patent disputes on patents they refuse to even show you. "but we have them!"
Spot on. Remember their claims that they have 241 (or is it 271?) patents on Linux? They can't show it off because once they did (e.g. SCO did) all the claims will crash. But litigation is not about who's right, it's about who can stay afloat the longest ...
the truth is that microsoft has never stopped kicking around free software authors (or commercial users of free software with deep pockets.)
And companies who copied MS playbook are making tons of money too, so why would MS suddenly abandon something that works so well for them? Because they "<3 linux"? Come on ...
these attacks didnt stop when steve stepped down; only the rhetoric changed. theyre still buying up their competition and suing and threatening to sue. all with a ridiculous "<3 linux" slogan on the whole thing.
Spot on. Just because they say "<3 linux" does not make it so. Just because they contributed to Linux kernel (mainly to make sure that the kernel runs well in Azure, which their customer demands) doesn't make it so. Mainly because they ported MSSQL server code to run on Linux (again, because their customer demands it) does not make it so. Just because they sit in the board on Linux Foundation does not make it.

Anybody who think that MS has changed because they "<3 linux" is just deluded.

Why does MS use git? Because they "<3 linux"? No, because their own in-house VSS s**ks b**ls. MS internal people started to use git themselves and found it was suitable. The reason why MS contributed to "git" (and mainly to make sure that every new release of git is Windows-compatible) is because git is used in-house. Plus all the other reasons said earlier (infiltration etc). This is practical matters. Not because "<3 linux". As soon as it does not benefit MS you can be assured it will be dropped like iron. They don't hesitate to write-off their US$70 billion "investment" on Nokia.

Am I happy that MS is contributing on open-source? Yes. Is MS to be trusted? No. So how can we allow contribution from non-trusted party? Like everything else - be vigilant. Take the good stuff and drop the bad stuff.
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fredx181
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#29 Post by fredx181 »

I found that gitlab can be a good alternative.
https://about.gitlab.com/

Works the same for repositories (using git push) and also supports hosting static webpages using e.g. jekyll or plain HTML.
It works a bit different (specially the web interface), needed to learn how, (did some google searching) took me a few hours to accomplish what I need.
Nice is that a repository can be much larger than on github (10GB limit, github limit is 1GB AFAIK) not sure yet if there's limit for size of files to be uploaded.

Fred

musher0
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#30 Post by musher0 »

Hi Fred.

Isn't gitlab only for groups (co-ops, businesses) of devs?
musher0
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fredx181
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#31 Post by fredx181 »

musher0 wrote:Hi Fred.

Isn't gitlab only for groups (co-ops, businesses) of devs?
Hi musher0,

It's rather new for me, but from what I experienced it's just the same as what can be done on github, there's choice for "private" or "public" repository (I made a few for testing), not obliged to join groups, co-ops, businesses or something like that.

Fred

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#32 Post by musher0 »

Good to know. Thanks, Fred.
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fredx181
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#33 Post by fredx181 »

fredx181 wrote:Nice is that a repository can be much larger than on github (10GB limit, github limit is 1GB AFAIK) not sure yet if there's limit for size of files to be uploaded.
To test, I uploaded a 300 MB ISO file, I saw no complaints from gitlab... Nice !!

Fred

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