Comment by closeparen
8 years ago
This dovetails nicely with Windows Subsystem for Linux, VS Code, and Microsoft’s ongoing play to capture the Silicon Valley hipster development ecosystem that Apple is alienating.
8 years ago
This dovetails nicely with Windows Subsystem for Linux, VS Code, and Microsoft’s ongoing play to capture the Silicon Valley hipster development ecosystem that Apple is alienating.
This was largely my thought behind the move.
Given that GitHub is quite proudly built on Ruby, I can't see them wanting to switch things up from a tech perspective. GitHub is stable, and it's tech stack is capable of staying up despite some major DDoS attacks.
If anything, I think this is an opportunity for Microsoft to introduce themselves to the Ruby and Rails teams, and to finally resolve the issues that stop Windows from being a first-class citizen in the Ruby world. If they can do this through both Windows and the Windows Subsystem for Linux then I think they'll be on to a winner. It's a capture of a much-loved service, and an opportunity to bring a mature set of tools into their domain.
I work for Microsoft, we run systems that are not built on MS technologies. There’s absolutely no push for migration. In my opinion, no-one will pressure GitHub to change their stack, it would be a suicide.
Disclaimer: this is just my personal opinion.
Aside from Wunderlist, who was acquired and running on AWS, and had to switch to Azure and rewrite a bunch of their code to become ToDo.
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I was looking at draft.sh from the Azure open source team and the current (very early) version literally only works on Mac. The only install method listed is Homebrew.
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Not right away, but eventually MS "old boy network" cancer will metastasize there and push all the good people out, just like it did in every single other acquisition. This problem is not unique to Microsoft: other large companies have it too. But it is more acute, because at MS the old boys network is utterly incompetent, completely entrenched, and the company is 100% top-down. Frontline devs are expected to do as they are told, and are considered to be expendable "resources". In contrast, at SV companies managers are more expendable than good engineers.
So you have inside knowledge of their business purpose in aquiring GitHub? Are you posting this in an official capacity as a representative of the company? Or do you not really know and just elevating your two cents using the name of your employer?
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Except minecraft...
Microsoft bought one of my favorite pieces of cloud software from a few years ago Deis[1]. With that they also got Helm[2] with the purchase. They are doing GREAT with Helm and are going in a different direction that looks super cool as they mothball Deis called Draft[3]. They are moving away from the OS company they used to be and betting heavily on cloud technologies and I think this Github purchase makes sense. Github has been stagnate for years. MS is embracing open source in a way they haven't before, and I think they are doing so in a way that is going to surprise people.
In NO way am I a Microsoft fan boy. I've been windows free going on a decade. I run Linux Mint and OSX as my primary desktop environments. Apple is burning me hard, the way the computing world is going to change in the next couple years, cluster technology is going to be at it's core and we are going to see some very different things grow out of it. I'm as shocked as anyone to see MS play nice with linux and especially contribute how they have to Kubernetes; which I think is the largest open source project in the world right now?
What if MS dumped resources into world class CI tools to go with Github? What if they made a Github open source module and would let you federate your content? I could see this being a really interesting thing. They could also screw us all, but under their current management I think they are getting ready to be competitive in an emergent environment that can't exist without open source.
[1] https://deis.com [2] https://docs.helm.sh/using_helm/ [3] https://github.com/Azure/draft
> What if they made a Github open source module and would let you federate your content?
Wow, that's optimistic! I'd be happy if they just keep it neutral.
Fact is all the big vendors publish and collaborate on github, this purchase threatens that ecosystem. And we are more likely to see a message of private code hosting sites, than a solid federation system for source control.
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Helm was contributed to CNCF last week: https://landscape.cncf.io/cncf=hosted,graduated,incubating,s...
Draft (which started with Deis and is continuing with Azure) continues to get active development: https://landscape.cncf.io/grouping=landscape&landscape=appli...
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Reminder: That didn't stop them from converting HoTMail over to NT/Exchange.
How many times did they try and publicly fail first? Two or three? Excellent validation for choosing FreeBSD and Apache for your 1999 startup. At least two announcements that it was "complete" turned out to be lies.
Years later the back end was still on FreeBSD and Solaris, but the front end was on Win 2000 using Windows Services for UNIX.
Twenty years ago!
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> Given that GitHub is quite proudly built on Ruby
And for that matter, GitLab as well :-)
I have lived and worked in SV for a decade, and still don't know a single "Silicon Valley hipster" developing with WSL or VS Code.
I do know the power of analytics and control over prominent backend systems, and the allure of being "gatekeeper" with the power to extract value from integrations.
> VS Code
you don't know anyone using vs code?
in all the circles I know, it's the new de-facto goto for text editing heavier than notepad.
I used Sublime Text for the longest time; tried Atom but wasn't thrilled. After 2 days of using VS Code, I uninstalled Sublime Text. VS Code is an excellent tool.
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No, I don't.
Vim, Sublime, Atom, Eclipse-based IDE...
Not once have I met anyone using VS code on any platform.
For sure! I've managed to get a good chunk of people I work/coauthor with to use it (and like it!), and I've observed an increasing number of my students using it as well (in classes on ML and numerical computing).
I think it got popular fast in the JS-heavy communities.
I'm running it on Ubuntu and like it much better than pycharm for python development.
Yeah, the open source dev community may very well see Microsoft quite differently in upcoming years if they keep playing their cards this way.
Can't speak for everyone but that won't happen personally until they start respecting privacy.
The Silicon Valley hipster development ecosystem does not have a problem with how Google respects privacy.
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I think it is a long term goal.
"Old" schoolers have and will likely have for ever that evil 90s vision of MS. However it is changing a bit in that people too. They still may be evil, but at least the look more modern (opensource, new technology, using/contributing to Linux etc).
However the important thing (for MS) here is new people. If you come into the scene now or in a few years you only get to know the "new" masked MS image. Yes, they are still doing dubious stuff but is all under the hoods, buried by layers of hype, cloud, linux and fireworks.
Rebranding some big stablished company with that kind of history is something that takes a long long time.
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This was absolutely my first thought too. I've developed for work over the last year on Windows. It's dark patterns to suck up data and ads now. There are ads on the login screen!
This is in regards to one Microsoft product: Windows. Reality is, they're not focused on Windows anymore, but I do agree it would be nice if they took away all that telemetry nonsense and allowed people to have better control over updates. To be completely fair under Linux I get updates weekly more or less, but they're just not forced upon me to install them.
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And my update settings.
I understand the need for security, but updates shouldn't break my computer either.
MS heavily respects privacy and mandates that every employee go through privacy and GDPR training every year. And remember, MS’s business is not rooted in exploiting user data to sell them ads. Replacing “they” in your sentence with Google or Facebook would be much more appropriate.
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Indeed. I'm always a little surprised at how readily developers recommend VS Code, given the lack of privacy guarantees and Microsoft's recent track record on both telemetry and quietly overriding past user settings with updates.
I think that this is real "DEVELOPERS DEVELOPERS DEVELOPERS" and they know it will bring them good times.
I doubt it, I think they are doing it because they’ve seen more and more of their enterprise migrate from TFS to git.
This is my opinion, but I think Microsoft tech is fairly terrible for open source and smaller projects, because .Net is a lot of complicated tooling you’ll never use outside of enterprise. At the same time they are rapidly becoming the “only” enterprise option rather quickly, and with that comes the question of why you’d chose AWS over Azure.
Sure visual studio has a free version, Windows now does Linux and .net Core is open but I see those moves as a way to make c# replace JAVA in schools not as a way to make open source love Microsoft.
Game development has used C# for quite a while, and with official support for Mono, and adoption of .NET in Unity [0], it's a viable choice. The language is constantly improving [1], and is doing so in the open, on GitHub no less [2]!
From what I saw as an intern at Microsoft a while back, there's way more of an engineering-led culture at Microsoft than people give it credit for, and to the extent there's a push to promote their own language and tooling, it's largely driven by a wholehearted belief (and challenge) that Microsoft tools are the right ones for the job, with initiatives being chosen to fulfill and expand that promise. And, more recently, what I hear is that Nadella's initiatives are genuinely promoting that ethos across the entire leadership structure. In that context, they make a lot of sense as a partner for Github.
[0] https://blogs.unity3d.com/2018/03/28/updated-scripting-runti...
[1] https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/dotnet/csharp/whats-new/csh...
[2] https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/vbteam/2015/01/10/were-movi...
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The web dev part, anyway. Microsoft still has a long hill to climb to be in the graces of nearly any kind of native dev.
While partially true, there are a ton of small and medium size companies out there that are just starting to rewrite their legacy stacks, with many choosing .Net with MSSQL. Worst part is, these shops keep turning up at my local LinuxFest yearly, looking for new dev talent.
What mirror universe do you live in where Windows doesn't have a huge amount of 3rd party native applications?
I don't think Microsoft even uses the same deck of cards as FOSS people.
Microsoft had their chance, and they worked hard to show us what they're made of. We learned the lesson, and they don't get another chance.
> This dovetails nicely with Windows Subsystem for Linux, VS Code, and Microsoft’s ongoing play to capture the Silicon Valley hipster development ecosystem that Apple is alienating.
I can tell you from experience that that will never, ever happen.
The most likely outcome is that GitHub will slowly but surely start to bleed open source projects to alternatives like GitLab. And GitHub will continue to live on, like LinkedIn and Skype before it, but it will lose mind share and will no longer be the epicenter of open source development.
Remember SourceForge? Yeah, that's right.
> Silicon Valley hipster development ecosystem that Apple is alienating
Not sure what you mean here.
They've never specifically targeted non-Apple developers as a core constituency. It was mainly due to the fact that OSX was UNIX derived that the platform became popular at all.
> This dovetails nicely with Windows Subsystem for Linux
Interix/SFU/SUA has always existed. WSL is just the latest iteration of it. And nobody uses it now just like nobody used it before
That's kind of a broad statement. I see a lot of people using WSL, I even think it has become part of the standard software kit for new hires within PlayStation Network. I know its widely used among the employees who opted for the Windows laptop over a MacBook. Anecdotal, of course, but I think you're downplaying the spread of its use.
We detached this subthread from https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17221777 and marked it off-topic.
May I ask why? It seems germane to the rest of the thread speculating on what Microsoft might be doing with this acquisition.
Whoops, that was a mistake on my part. Sorry!
It's fixed now. Thanks for responding so politely.
Can you elaborate on what the Silicon Valley "hipster development ecosystem" is?
There are several distinct developer ecosystems. Some people write C# and VB on .NET in Visual Studio on Windows machines for delivery to Windows Server enterprise networks. Some people write Java on Spring/J2EE in Eclipse for delivery to Java enterprise application servers. Some people write C++ in proprietary IDEs for delivery to proprietary embedded systems platforms. But the one I’m talking about is the one centered around Github, Kubernetes, Macs, and trendy open source tools like Go, Rust, React, etc. The “hipster” characterization is tongue in cheek. It would be insufficient to say “the developer ecosystem” because MS already has one of those, including its own VCS, Team Foundation Services.
Rust is an interesting one, because I think it bridges those last two - normally very separated - groups. Some of those who deliver software into embedded systems are excited about the possibility of a replacement to C++.
(disclaimer: am an embedded systems engineer and a Rust fanboy)
If it requires an explanation, don't explain.
To me, if it requires an explanation then an explanation would be best. I certainly don't care for explanations of things that don't require explanations.
Guess I'm not gonna ask why you created an account just to say that
Not quite so.
I think WSL is a great idea and it also works very well, if we ignore minor bugs and oddities. But the acquisition of github is AWFUL. Microsoft gave the choice of "take it or leave it, my way or the highway".
There was no way for me to associate with the move so I was gone from github after 10 years.
Linux subsystem for windows is garbage, it brings all the same issues with running a linux VM on windows with no more benefit than cygwin gave and who exactly is apple alienating? This sounds like opinion since apple profits are doing just fine and waking into any incubator will show you who the dominant player is. also windows is not even close to comparable to macos except that they’re both OSes
> Linux subsystem for windows is garbage, it brings all the same issues with running a linux VM on windows with no more benefit than cygwin gave
> also windows is not even close to comparable to macos except that they’re both OSes
This sounds like opinions ;)