I'm surprised there's not a single mention of "Microsoft" in this or the npm announcement [1], given the old-evil-history of Microsoft and the new-nice Microsoft we have today.
I would expect that there was at least a mention, considering the reason that most modules in npm are still in ES5 is exactly because of the monopolistic practices that Microsoft followed back in the day which makes Internet Explorer still relevant.
Not negative, not positive comment. Just surprising there was no mention. And I do think Microsoft is doing a great job recently with Open Source in general.
Microsoft is aware of their reputation. So much that they even have a policy of not allowing Microsoft+Github co-brand promotions. They want the Github brand to stay strong instead of being diluted into some mix of Github and Microsoft.
I would guess mentions of enterprise and businesses all over with a contact sales button.
Some old pages are enterprisey and didn't know they pushed a desktop app for so long lol.
I loved that they explained how the name github came to be in one of the older landing pages.
ah that makes sense. That's disappointing for sure but I assumed they meant something more specific to Microsoft. These profit oriented changes are pretty standard after the acquisition of any website. If anything they feel mild considering how much potential there is for Microsoft to really exploit the freemium experience for more sales.
On the other hand, GitHub had a reputation for offering a first class freemium experience and this does chip away at that a bit.
Yeah, I guess a few more changes to push you to select to receive promotional emails. Other than that, it's pretty alright.
I like that they don't have 30 day retention policy when you want to delete something (repos, account) which is what everyone else does to keep you on the site. Really hate that.
I’ve been a developer for nearly 25 years. I’m not sure if there is anything MS could ever do to regain my trust. Unfortunately this seems to be the way of large tech companies. At one time I thought Google was the best thing ever (don’t be evil). Now I find that I view Google in much the same way as I do MS. A huge corrupt behemoth that needs to be broken up.
I definitely saw Microsoft-of-the-90s as corrupt and harmful, and I definitely see Google-of-today as corrupt and harmful. I am not wholly opposed to the idea that both are bigger than companies should be allowed to be.
But apart from the fact that they followed the unfortunate modern trend to add telemetry to things, I can't really say Microsoft has done anything particularly offensive to me in the past... nearly a decade?
Just because you've been a developer for 25 years doesn't mean you should evaluate a company based on 25 year old events.
And that is all recent, on top of all the other stuff they won’t fix, like issues where file extensions magically reset to Windows defaults, nagging you to just please try Edge because its better for real this time, and the unavoidable mandatory Candy Crush - seriously, if you install with no internet connection, it will keep a placeholder there for you that will install as soon as you’re online.
The telemetry issues are annoying too, not because they exist but because you have to read a books worth of literature to understand what they chose to document. Seriously:
I would generally agree Windows looks more like traditional Microsoft than many other arms of their org.
And the Candy Crush thing... like, if it was just Home edition? Fine. If it was even smart enough to realize it need not preinstall that on a domain account (the installation of UWP apps is technically per-user), like, if they'd demonstrated any recognition that Windows is used in professional settings... I'm right there with you on this one.
However...
> like issues where file extensions magically reset to Windows defaults
https://devblogs.microsoft.com/oldnewthing/20190225-00/?p=10... is probably the best response to that. Given the number of Windows app developers who do unholy things with their apps, it's hardly a surprise. (My understanding is Windows has a huge number of secret compatibility shims just to keep major software vendors' bad hacks and API misuses working.)
> nagging you to just please try Edge
I literally can't escape "switch to Chrome" nags, as a Firefox user. Every Google site has at least one, Google's home page has displayed an amazing three Chrome popups at the same time before. I'd maybe give you this one if they weren't waging a war on it to a far more aggressive foe, and losing badly.
I’m a fulltime Firefox user personally, and I have not noticed a whole lot of nag. Does it not show up under Linux or something?
edit: So far I’ve tried switching my user agent, turning off adblock, using a private/logged out window, on docs and search. Not that I’m doubting you or anything, but I am surprised I’ve not noticed it much since switching back to Firefox.
It’s also probably worth disclosing that I work for Google, though at home I am using Firefox and Duckduckgo.
Your mileage may vary on any given month, as Google frontend code seems to come and go regularly and randomly, indeed varying by platform, OS, and lunar cycle.
If you want an action to be made legal, you legalize it. Don’t blame the enforcement of the law. It makes for great virtue signaling but is useless for bringing long-term change and it doesn’t help provide a stable environment for people illegally in the country.
ICE itself routinely breaks laws in trying to capture undocumented people. But to speak to your point directly, I would love to see immigration reform. Until then, I’ll absolutely keep speaking out against ICE. That’s not “virtue signaling”, it’s just advocating for a cause I care about.
Furthermore, basically everything Microsoft did that made developers hate them is legal. Why is it okay to hold a grudge for “embrace, extend, extinguish” but not for aiding and abetting an organization that consistently violates our civil liberties?
The legislative process is not the only feedback system that is enshrined in the US constitution, else there would be no mention of public gatherings or protests. What you suggest is a false dichotomy.
Nonsense. There is hardly a local government in Australia not hopelessly corrupted by local real estate interests. In many nations local corruption is endemic right down to every neighbourhood police station. Size isn't the question: money's corruption of power operates at all scales.
Size is absolutely the question. There is always corruption, but in small municipalities at least the scale of corruption is contained. In a sufficiently local area the corrupt has to brush shoulders with his unwilling benefactors and be shamed.
Gates just finally stepped away from the chair. When that shit comes from the top, it gets baked into the culture and has a staying power beyond any tenure.
For most businesses, Microsoft still holds a monopoly position on desktop OSs. For a lot of smaller IT departments, this bleeds into back-end servers as well.
Microsoft has the Windows Subsystem for Linux, allowing Linux binaries to run on Windows. How about the reverse? Get WINE to the point where Linux (or FreeBSD or some fully source OS) can reliably run Windows binaries.
Along the same line, provide portable libraries to allow other office suites to reliably edit MS Office files (docx, pptx, etc). Maybe Adobe or someone will come up with a commercial competitor, instead of just LibreOffice.
Make Windows and MS Office a choice, rather than a tax businesses have to pay to be compatible with everyone else. That would go a long way to establishing trust.
Microsoft is arguably working on it: They offered up exFAT support to Linux, and it's been added to the kernel. SQL Server being supported on Linux is huge. Probably the absolute biggest selling point to Windows-based infrastructure remains Active Directory, and if you're cool with being cloud-based (I'm not, FWIW), they offer that through Azure now.
Windows is like three decades of legacy systems, but I would argue many of Microsoft's recent decisions have been at the cost of their Windows division.
Chapter 7 Bankruptcy where they get acquired by a newly-reformed Sun Microsystems (where no stock is owned by Oracle or Oracle shareholders).
EDIT: I'm mostly kidding, but you can't really expect true change of morals when the vast majority of the upper management is the same under the new CEO as under the old one.
As a former Sun employee I love this comment, but in all fairness Sun did have its own level of sleaze in the C suite (neither Eric Schmidt nor Scott McNealy would really do well as ethical leader exemplars)
That said, I'm thinking Moon Microsystems :-) Not as big or as hot as Sun. (ok that is a bad punalogy) I did get the domain though, it was available and I couldn't resist.
At the risk of sounding somewhat naive, I think people do have the capacity to grow over time. Perhaps part of the reason why Microsoft has seemingly turned over a new leaf in recent years is that upper management has learned from their past mistakes? I do see your point though, and I think it's stuck in the back of a lot of our minds.
It's not so much a grudge as a reaction, call it an immuno-type response. I shed my MS-OS Windows Desktop addiction over 20 years ago to become a desktop Linux user and I still see my co-workers struggling every day with many of the same issues I haven't had to cope with anymore since then.
Ever since I have been able to get the Microsoft out of my systems, I find myself naturally predisposed to keep it out. I am not against Microsoft, I really am a fan of a lot of the open and developer-focused things they are doing, certainly not least of which is their support for Kubernetes through Azure, but this does not make me more receptive to going back to living in a Microsoft OS-flavored ecosystem today, it just is not happening for me and it's nothing to do with holding a grudge or similar.
I use a Mac now because it was provided by work, if they offer me a trade for a Windows machine I would probably consider it because of the progress made by WSL2, but our group policy lags somewhat behind and certainly not on insider ring, so none of my coworkers have been able to try WSL2 on their work-provided Windows machines, or likely will for some time, and that makes me seriously think twice about it.
My natural inclination is that I would much rather install Linux as the host OS so I have control over things like when updates get applied, or whether a reboot needs to take place immediately, in spite of the struggle that sometimes comes with that, it is really much better to have the source and keep the capability to control your own hardware. And then only run Windows in a VM whenever it is really needed. (In other words, to be able to occasionally run Windows apps in a similar way as I do when I have to use them on a Mac.)
I just find it tragic that the only way GitHub could survive (I guess) was to be BOUGHT. Like why couldn't they stay smaller, focus on what they were good at, and standardize with the community all the integrations in an orderly manner?
Although, Microsoft has shown they care more about the developer community than Apple as of late. So for that, I can at least say my trust is rising. But it's a bit too late for me, I'm happily running Linux for most of my daily life.
Recently I installed win10 pro and was appalled at the way I had you jump through hoops to NOT have a m$ account, not to mention the blatant adware. And this was win10 professional.
It certainly reminded me that m$ is a long long way away from where it was in the 90s and early naughties.
So, a good start would be a stable and private os without all the adware and telemetry.
PS: I use gitea instead of GitHub these days. Nor do I use vscode, but sublime text, for the same reasons: too much telemetry that cant be disabled permanently.
It would be interesting if they ended up with Brendan Burns (creator of k8s when he was at google) in charge of github at some point and made him like the OSS champion. He's running all the containers and linux stuff on Azure, so it seems like it would be a natural fit.
Three product companies (Enterprise, Consumer, and Media), an open source company (Research, Engineering, and Collaboration), and a foundation owning all of the patents and other licensed IP.
A trustworthy Microsoft is one that has open sourced one or more of their core products. Anything less is just retaining their classic hostility towards outside engineers.
To me it looks like water that isn't wet. PR (propaganda) and time will improve their reputation, but the "commodify your compliment" strategy, the intent to dominate markets through anticompetitive behavior... Those things aren't gone. Big tech companies (like most big business) don't prioritize public good over profit, so they really don't deserve anyone's trust apart from trusting them to seek profit.
I'm surprised there's not a single mention of "Microsoft" in this or the npm announcement [1], given the old-evil-history of Microsoft and the new-nice Microsoft we have today.
Maybe Microsoft's reputation is exactly the reason why it was left out of this announcement.
Sometimes a brand is so tarnished that the owner tries to hide it from the people who hate it. (For example, Comcast → Xfinity. I expect Monsanto to go the same way and become Bayer.)
The latter already happened[1]. Bayer offloaded most of it's ag business (to BASF) and replaced it with Monsanto. Monsanto has been rebranded "Bayer Crop Science". Although I'm guessing much for the same reason, Monsanto never rebranded any of the dozens of seed companies it acquired over the years (e.g. Dekalb, Seminis, Asgrow, etc.)
I installed Windows Subsystem for Linux 2 on an older machine just now. The MSFT of today is definitely a far cry from the MSFT of yesteryear. Such a thing would have been unheard of 15 years ago.
My prediction, that my IT department hates to hear, is that Windows is going away.
Microsoft doesn't want to be Microsoft anymore; it wants to be Oracle and IBM and primarily make money off of business consulting and the cloud.
I think Windows will eventually become a presentation and slowly-phased-out compatibility layer on top of Linux, similar to the way macOS became Unix, but even less different than its underlying OS.
However, it should be noted that I'm not very good at predicting things.
> I think Windows will eventually become a presentation and slowly-phased-out compatibility layer on top of Linux.
I think this is unlikely. In many ways the NT kernel is superior to the Linux kernel. I just wish it were open source and didn't have the rest of windows around it.
Since when has technical superiority ever determined which product wins in the marketplace?
The Linux kernel is ubiquitous and free-as-in-beer, so it might win out. Android has already shown how you can build a proprietary userland on top of it.
Very unlikely, as it would mess with backwards compatibility and cause unhappiness of users and IT departments. Microsoft still makes money selling Office and other products there.
Microsoft doesn't need to care about backwards compatibility anymore, now that Wine exists precisely to have compatibility with Windows software (including software that even modern Windows itself no longer wants to run).
Hasn't Wine been good enough for at least 10+ years? Furthermore, how does being backed by Valve actually be of any significant value? I've heard of this argument for a couple of years now and I'm still not convinced (not that I follow Wine development that closely).
> Hasn't Wine been good enough for at least 10+ years?
Depends on what you mean by "good enough". Wine is an incredible project that has achieved amazing successes, but it still falls short in a lot of ways.
I personally don't use Wine but I've encountered people online in the last 10+ years that use the argument that it's "good enough" for people to fully switch to Linux. Realistically, I don't think Wine actually convinced more than a handful of users to abandon Windows
If Windows goes away, personal computing basically dies with it. Everything will be locked-down walled-garden webshit, or community-built-jank FOSS desktops that really want to be like the locked-down walled-gaden webshit experience but will say it is for the user's own good.
Doesn't that require actually extending and extinguishing, though?
WSL1 was a proprietary reimplementation of the Linux system call ABI as an NT subsystem. WSL2 is actual Linux running in a VM. That seems to be moving in exactly the opposite direction.
They can't. That's why I hate people using that chestnut in relation to Linux: It doesn't work for two reasons which stick out at me.
Reason one is because Linux is GPL'd, Microsoft can't extend Linux without giving its extensions back to the community.
Reason two is because Linux is already established in multiple realms, so Microsoft can't bully its way into dominance. Microsoft has a respectable presence in server rooms, but it isn't absolutely dominant by a long shot. Microsoft probably has something going on in the embedded/hobbyist SBC space, but there's no path for them to dominate there. And, FWIW, Linux owns the supercomputer world. I also can't see IBM falling over itself to put Windows on mainframes.
Open Source copyright licenses exists exactly to make the extinguish part impossible. MS cannot put the genie back in the bottle when it puts out open source software.
I mean. It's a subsidiary. I understand your sentiment but mentioning Microsoft would be like signaling that GitHub doesn't have any autonomy which is quite the contrary to what Microsoft said when buying it. So don't expect sudden sincerity on this. There's a reason why they haven't added Microsoft branding to areas like the footer.
Microsoft wants to host as much information as possible so it can collect data on developers and users. It is very hard to avoid giving data to Microsoft. GitHub, NPM, LinkedIn, Office 365, Teams, the lock-in is still alive.
A decentralized web or a non-for-profit like Wikipedia is a much better model for these infrastructure projects.
Git was designed to be decentralized from the start. Is there a way to revitalize that heritage?
Discoverability and pull requests are two big benefits that GitHub has offered. Could we create decentralized open source solutions to provide those benefits? Are there other benefits that we’d need to provide to have viable alternatives to centralization?
Supporting and using Git forges that support decentralized development, such as Pagure[0], would be a good way to do so.
Pagure supports submitting pull requests with Git repos on any server (regardless of whether it's running Pagure or not) with its remote pull requests feature. Issues, docs, and pull request metadata are all stored as git repos using JSON files as data, making it easy and portable to other Pagure instances and easy to convert for any other system.
As far as I know, Pagure is now the only Git forge software packaged in all major Linux distributions (Fedora+EPEL[1], openSUSE[2], Mageia[3], Debian[4], Ubuntu[5], Arch Linux AUR[6]).
It'd be nice to see people interested in this helping to build a future supporting portable, decentralized development.
Would be super strange if titles always referred to the top-most parent company. Every time Google does something the title should be referring to Alphabet? Please no.
The other way around, and in fact it already is that way -- we often say stuff like "Waymo, Google's self-driving car project", because we know who really runs the alphabet show.
This is great news for people forced to use Windows. JavaScript being a 1st class citizen on MS platforms is being even more cemented. It'd be great if Microsoft moved faster with Python integration into the MS ecosystem like SQL Server.
> considering the reason that most modules in npm are still in ES5 is exactly because of the monopolistic practices that Microsoft followed back in the day which makes Internet Explorer still relevant.
My first reaction was ... “so Microsoft”. I’m with you on the positive path Microsoft have been on with OSS but also recall the not-so-recent history. It’ll be interesting to see how this plays out.
My fear might probably be unfounded, but NPM is an integral part of the JS ecosystem. And given MicroSoft has .NET Core, I have a strange feeling that they'll concentrate on npm less.
Product Manager at GitHub here - I'll be the Product Manager for npm when the acquisition closes. I agree - npm is definitely an integral part of the JavaScript ecosystem. The npm package registry will remain free for public projects. We're going to work to ensure that the service is stable and accessible, and ready to serve the next million packages.
This is independent of what Microsoft's doing with .NET Core. I'm excited about the work that they're doing, but this isn't going to stop us from making sure that npm is outstanding.
I think they view it as way to make Core more reliable. Core relies community developed - npm hosted - tools like gulp and webpack. Unlike the full Framework, Core doesn't have "built-in" or "endorsed" bundling solution.
I would expect that there was at least a mention, considering the reason that most modules in npm are still in ES5 is exactly because of the monopolistic practices that Microsoft followed back in the day which makes Internet Explorer still relevant.
Not negative, not positive comment. Just surprising there was no mention. And I do think Microsoft is doing a great job recently with Open Source in general.
[1] https://blog.npmjs.org/post/612764866888007680/next-phase-mo...