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Unpopular opinion about Microsoft buying GitHub.

Just putting it out there that when you made your github repos you did so under their privacy policy and terms and will be protected under those in the future, and that both GitHub and Microsoft are corporations with the goals of making money.

Are people seriously mad that their code has gone from one capitalist corporation to another, with no foreseeable change in privacy or data policy? I have respect for those that switched to self hosted long ago since that's going from corporate to private, but if you throw away the UX and community GitHub has developed because a multinational corporation (with so many branches, products and divisions, which happens to have a few products you don't like) will soon own it, are you actually making a rational, guided decision?

Also just throwing it out there that GitLab is also a company. They've also had issues with keeping data intact in the past. They do, however, have free private repos (although I can't ever trust someone who gives me "free" privacy) as well as builtin CI. There are some definite upsides to it, although the UX has a ton of differences. If you're expecting the same dashboard and workflow you've used on GitHub, don't, GitLab has cool features but the bells and whistles aren't the exact same.

If you're switching to GitLab solely because of Microsoft, step back and think, regardless of how popular it might make you to hate Microsoft, is it really worth changing your development ecosystem to go from one corporate entity to another solely because you don't like the company?

I use GitLab and GitBub as well as Bitbucket and selfhosted git on a daily basis. They each have their upsides and downsides; but I think switching from one to the other solely because of Microsoft is not only totally irrational, but really makes light of/disrespects the amazing tools and UX the teams behind each one have carefully developed. Pick your Git hosting based on features and what works out for your use case, not because of which corporate overlord has their name plastered on it.

(Also just throwing it out there that lots of devs love VS Code, and that's Microsoft owned too... They did also build and pioneer a bunch of really cool shit for devs including Typescript so it's not like they're evil or incapable in any sense?)

Comments
  • 28
    GitBub
    Sorry, I had to
  • 14
    And I agree with you
  • 4
    @amatrelan not sure about this, the Skype developers mostly worked on new features to get their business end running. I know a ton of wall street businesses rely on it (even banks) which isn't great but it makes them more money after more specialized competitors kicked them out of the ring. Skype simply realized it needed to compete some other way.

    Right now GitHub isn't being cornered like this since it has vastly superior UX, and it rarely changes their frontend so I doubt this will ever change (also Microsoft has a pretty good record recently with developer ecosystems). What WILL corner GitHub, however, is ditching it en masse before the deal is even closed.

    Users: *leave GitHub before deal even closes on sole basis that Microsoft is acquiring it because it's trendy, potentially forcing GitHub to do whatever it can to survive*
    Users: why would Microsoft do this?!
  • 4
    @theNox until I read your comment, I seriously thought GitBub is yet another Git repo service that I didn't know :3

    silly me LOL
  • 7
    Unpopular opinion but agreed to 100%.

    To me, whoever ditching GitHub just because of Microsoft is Brandist (derived from racist).
  • 2
    @Frederick I mean we should at least wait and judge based on what they gonna do.

    Exporting and backing things up to other options is a smart contingency move 🤔

    Migrating everything based on brand is brandist :3
  • 0
    The only “non-devious” value in purchasing GitHub would be as a revenue stream, yeah right.

    And the argument that Microsoft has a lot of contributions to the open-source is just mind blowing. It goes to show that even 1,000 of their employees are using GitHub rather than their own VSTS ? but let's just sit there and praise microsoft for their recent enlightenment that they've changed a lot.

    But they have a new CEO dude, which owns less than 4% and answers to a board that only cares about siphoning as much money as they can from their customers rather than providing something honest like GitHub did

    GitHub was good because it was neutral, because google and facebook and IBM weren't afraid to plug their shit there, you think they would've done that if it was originally owned by microsoft? but maybe that's not their fault.
  • 0
    The point to the matter is that microsoft tried and failed at building a GitHub (and a lot other shit) and you want people to not freak out about such an incident?

    in the end, it doesn't really matter since you have all kinds of people who give a shit and others who simply don't, and both are fine.

    And are you seriously surprised that people rant in devrant? :/
  • 0
  • 0
    GitLab already costs something if you want pull/merge requests. I feel like this is not the greatest substitution and not feasible for open source projects
  • 0
    @Frederick Minecraft died due to them implementing the store and removing mod support recently.
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