Exodus from GitHub, but just not to SourceForge(medium.com)
medium.com
Exodus from GitHub, but just not to SourceForge
https://medium.com/@jonykatz/exodus-from-github-but-just-not-to-sourceforge-690845933cf7
66 comments
I don't understand why the people have this huge team mentality. If this team does that, it wrong, if another does it it is ok. Google cancelled Google Code with no backlash, or at least not to this level. Microsoft is trying to save a vital company in the open source community that didn't even have a CEO or any path to profitability and people react like they are going to ban all projects that are not C#. Not only in tech, but elsewhere I see a trend of just following a herd mentality instead of judging every action by it's own weight or at least let it play out. Of course, if you are afraid have a plan B or backup what ever you see fit but we need more critical thinking in our daily lives.
> Microsoft is trying to save a vital company...
So Microsoft is in the "company saving" business now? This couldn't be farther from the truth. They bought Github not to save it, but to use it as a resource for whatever goals they deem appropriate. And I really doubt Microsoft's goals align with open source well.
So Microsoft is in the "company saving" business now? This couldn't be farther from the truth. They bought Github not to save it, but to use it as a resource for whatever goals they deem appropriate. And I really doubt Microsoft's goals align with open source well.
SMH. I used to work for Nat at Xamarin before it was acquired by MSFT. GitHub and Xamarin have had a long and deep relationship going back to at least 2012 (that I’m aware of anyway).
Xamarin was run on GitHub. We never used any other version control system. GitHub used Xamarin extensively as well. There were a lot of overlapping social graphs between the engineers of both as well.
Miguel and Nat both helped to make F/OSS and Linux what it is today—thank them if you like GNOME. Nat represents MSFT in this deal, and that’s great news for F/OSS enthusiasts everywhere.
Nat and Scott Guthrie aren’t responsible for the “sins of their fathers.” Time to move on from the Microsoft hating. That era has been over for a while.
Xamarin was run on GitHub. We never used any other version control system. GitHub used Xamarin extensively as well. There were a lot of overlapping social graphs between the engineers of both as well.
Miguel and Nat both helped to make F/OSS and Linux what it is today—thank them if you like GNOME. Nat represents MSFT in this deal, and that’s great news for F/OSS enthusiasts everywhere.
Nat and Scott Guthrie aren’t responsible for the “sins of their fathers.” Time to move on from the Microsoft hating. That era has been over for a while.
> Time to move on from the Microsoft hating. That era has been over for a while.
I'll consider it when they allow me turn off telemetry in Windows 10.
I'll consider it when they allow me turn off telemetry in Windows 10.
>Miguel and Nat both helped to make F/OSS and Linux what it is today—thank them if you like GNOME.
Mfw https://youtu.be/9UIiSz5WvRk
Mfw https://youtu.be/9UIiSz5WvRk
Yesterday, I only had to worry about storing my data on GitHub if I was in direct competition with them on the integrated SCM business. Any other code wasn't in opposition to their interests. We, generally, were welcome.
Today my code on GitHub is in competition with the myriad projects that Microsoft publishes. And even if I stick with Windows coding, they too can and will incorporate it into their stack.
Tl;Dr. Doing stuff on GitHub is directly competing with Microsoft's own business.
Today my code on GitHub is in competition with the myriad projects that Microsoft publishes. And even if I stick with Windows coding, they too can and will incorporate it into their stack.
Tl;Dr. Doing stuff on GitHub is directly competing with Microsoft's own business.
That's a fair concern, and one they now will now have to adequately address in order to keep users content.
But unless you are AWS or Google Cloud Platform, Microsoft isn't competing with you. They may have similar products/services out there at some level, but these days, if it's not driving a lot of Azure adoption/retention then it's not something Microsoft is really going to compete against. That even goes for Windows. Microsoft is putting increasing amounts of money into the Linux ecosystem these days as well.
But unless you are AWS or Google Cloud Platform, Microsoft isn't competing with you. They may have similar products/services out there at some level, but these days, if it's not driving a lot of Azure adoption/retention then it's not something Microsoft is really going to compete against. That even goes for Windows. Microsoft is putting increasing amounts of money into the Linux ecosystem these days as well.
Which big corporate's is? If Microsoft can't be trusted neither Google, Facebook,IBM or
Oracle for that matter. They could ruin or shut it down if it's not aligning with their goal which is to make money.
https://www.investopedia.com/terms/g/goodwill.asp
Either goodwill, a cheap deal since they were about to fold, gain trust for people to use Azure Linux or Azure open source platform, etc. I have no idea, but goodwill is an option.
Either goodwill, a cheap deal since they were about to fold, gain trust for people to use Azure Linux or Azure open source platform, etc. I have no idea, but goodwill is an option.
$7 billion in stock isn't "about to fold" money.
Please tell me you are trolling people. You can't seriously believe what you are writing here. Microsoft is an ugly company with ugly business practices and they are absolutely not trying to save anybody.
Have you been paying attention to Microsoft over the past few years? They have an ugly past, but they are a different company now. I actually think this is a good thing for the community. I for one am sticking with GitHub.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embrace,_extend,_and_extinguis...
Those who forget the past are condemned to repeat it - George Santayana
Microsoft lost all goodwill a long time ago, and they'll never get it back.
Those who forget the past are condemned to repeat it - George Santayana
Microsoft lost all goodwill a long time ago, and they'll never get it back.
If they lost it all "a long time ago" is there a new cohort of developers who just weren't around to see it happen. Most of the references on that page are from ~2002, so kids who were six then are out of college now.
If people choose to judge them by a different time scale than you, their conclusions seem pretty justified.
They are so different, that even thought they keep the same practices and goals from always, some people say they're a different company now!
> they are a different company now
To name a some of their recent misbehavior: Windows 10 ads and telemetry, Skype, GPL license violation (ie still actively working against FOSS)
To me MS keeps proving they are still exactly the same company they've always been. They tend to be better at hiding it from public, I have to give them that.
To name a some of their recent misbehavior: Windows 10 ads and telemetry, Skype, GPL license violation (ie still actively working against FOSS)
To me MS keeps proving they are still exactly the same company they've always been. They tend to be better at hiding it from public, I have to give them that.
Agreed. Forced telemetry is unforgivably unethical. There absolutely must be a way to opt out.
> GPL license violation
Context?
Context?
It's going to take a hell of a lot more actual honest-to-goodness support and good actions before I'm willing to trust them. I remember the browser wars, kerberos, samba, hard drive compression, their acquisitions they ground into the mud, windows 10 spyware, and more.
It's the ol "Embrace Extend and Extinguish". I'll give it 5 years before I trust them. They'll likely show their usual colors soon enough.
It's the ol "Embrace Extend and Extinguish". I'll give it 5 years before I trust them. They'll likely show their usual colors soon enough.
Just remember what's going on around Win10. Toxicity levels are all-time high. No decline in anti-customer thinking
Could you expand on what you're saying here? How are they ugly? What previous acquisitions in this realm have they screwed over?
I'd love to educate myself further, but need more details.
I'd love to educate myself further, but need more details.
I want people to judge by themselves. You can argue that yes, they have made some mistakes and probably bad practices like all companies. Try to get out of the tech bubble, companies in the world run on Excel. That alone has a huge impact on society. Not everything is black and white. I'm just a fan of critical thinking and not herd mentality not of Microsoft. I'm criticizing the reaction of all this.
This is an altruistic move on Microsoft's part? Puhleaze. And Google routinely gets beaten up for killing projects, it's just that nobody used Google Code.
I will have to disagree with that, back in the day I remember using more Google Code than Github. Maybe I was more into fringe projects that were not big enough and on Github, but in my personal experience the pain was felt when we lost a bunch of issues and documentation of the platform and not the code itself or the binaries. Plus, this seems like a strategy of Microsoft to win some brownie points in the open source community unless they see a huge money making opportunity that I'm not seeing.
GitHub license was changed a year or so ago, allowing an unlimited license to use. I took down my personal repos when they announced (quietly) that. I saw the HN post about it. Lot of people just didn't seem to care much.
I'm no lawyer, but wouldn't that mean now Microsoft has an unlimited license of all code uploaded to GitHub? That doesn't seem, ehh, good?
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13597340
I'm no lawyer, but wouldn't that mean now Microsoft has an unlimited license of all code uploaded to GitHub? That doesn't seem, ehh, good?
https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13597340
Are you a lawyer? Didn't think so. "A lot of people" just read it for what it is which is legally protecting themselves while they are actively processing your code to syntax highlight it, display diffs, calculate stats etc. And these a lot of people said as much in the thread.
And the GPL(2,3), and many other libre-based open source licneses is perfectly well within the scope to do exactly those things. They don't need a forever world license that exempts them from anything and everything forever.
And naw shit. I said I wasn't a lawyer. But I can read. It doesn't take someone with a JD to read a term that looks pretty suspicious.
And naw shit. I said I wasn't a lawyer. But I can read. It doesn't take someone with a JD to read a term that looks pretty suspicious.
> Not only in tech, but elsewhere I see a trend of just following a herd mentality instead of judging every action by it's own weight or at least let it play out.
It's a consequence of hooking up all world's information before people understand how to safely digest it. It will fix itself if we can find an equilibrium before we all destroy each other.
It's a consequence of hooking up all world's information before people understand how to safely digest it. It will fix itself if we can find an equilibrium before we all destroy each other.
Google did face backlash and it wasn't to this level because its use wasn't nearly as ubiquitous
Or you know - use BitBucket that allows unlimited number of private repos for free afaik.
I love competition and choice, I'm not even a fan of Github but I see their importance in the game. I'm criticizing herd mentality and something bigger than where you host a repo. I'm asking for critical thinking and that is it.
This exodus is precisely why Microsoft bought github, and why Microsoft built VS Code, and why it is open sourcing .NET Core and why it is shipping Linux integration into Windows and all the other huge moves the company is making.
They recognize they lost the hearts and minds of developers. They are fixing that. Not fixed. Fixing. It’ll take the better part of a decade and some people will never change.
Five years ago no one would have expected Microsoft to ship an amazing editor on Linux and OSX. Its great to have such an amazing development team once again actively believing “developers, developers, developers” is the key to success. I can’t wait to see what they do with GitHub as they work to regain relevance and interest.
They recognize they lost the hearts and minds of developers. They are fixing that. Not fixed. Fixing. It’ll take the better part of a decade and some people will never change.
Five years ago no one would have expected Microsoft to ship an amazing editor on Linux and OSX. Its great to have such an amazing development team once again actively believing “developers, developers, developers” is the key to success. I can’t wait to see what they do with GitHub as they work to regain relevance and interest.
Yet most of their other tools still don't work on Linux, and have no public roadmap to, or any kind of comments on.. I'm waiting on my MS Teams client.... I can understand the older software, that might have lots of history, legacy libraries, etc, but Teams is a brand new tool they are just releasing.. They have a chrome plugin, but it requires you install an MSI.
Sorry, to clarify my frustration, the windows client for Teams is an electron based application.
It works great on macOS. ;)
Support for a tertiary platform (in terms of addressable market share) like Linux desktops comes much later in this kind of product’s maturation.
Teams needs to first gain wider enterprise adoption on Windows and macOS first before they will look at allocating resources to additional platforms. Better off sticking with Slack on Linux until then.
Support for a tertiary platform (in terms of addressable market share) like Linux desktops comes much later in this kind of product’s maturation.
Teams needs to first gain wider enterprise adoption on Windows and macOS first before they will look at allocating resources to additional platforms. Better off sticking with Slack on Linux until then.
Almost nothing in this article is accurate. We’ve been doing everything we can to improve SourceForge and we did not hide anything. The writer has an axe to grind for some reason, and maybe his anger is warranted, but it's definitely directed at the wrong people. https://sourceforge.net/blog/introducing-the-new-sourceforge...
Having read some of the articles around the missing SVN commits it certainly didn't seem to me like SourceForge was being transparent (or "New"). Was there some big outreach after that incident I would have missed?
>Removed bundled adware from projects
Too late, already lost my trust.
This was unexcusable to let happen years ago and was one of the scummiest things I experienced in the software world.
I havent used sourceforge in years and have gone out of my way to avoid it. They cannot be trusted.
Too late, already lost my trust.
This was unexcusable to let happen years ago and was one of the scummiest things I experienced in the software world.
I havent used sourceforge in years and have gone out of my way to avoid it. They cannot be trusted.
They need to rebrand. Saying "download my new project from sourceforge" is an easy way to get cheap laughs from developers. I'm not saying this to dunk on sourceforge, but to make a point that the brand has so much ill will, broken trust and baggage associated with it that the first step should be a rename.
I'm actually very genuinely curious: Why did you take over SourceForge and keep its extremely tainted brand, instead of starting something new? Usually, when someone buys a brand, they're doing it because there's some value attached to it, but for me at least, it'll take a lot more for me to try out SourceForge than a service with a completely fresh brand I haven't heard about before.
Because over a million people daily still use SourceForge, and over 500,000 projects do as well. We're focused on doing right by them.
I remember back when 15ish years ago when SourceForge was a neat thing. I cannot, for the life of me, figure out why I would go there for any reason. Let alone host anything I cared about on that domain.
It's not even death by a thousand cuts, which y'all have done to yourself, but you also just failed to provide anything in the last 10 years that felt like it wasn't a cop out. Ignoring the abysmal failures and adware issues, which should be a non starter anyway.
We have tons of options that aren't SourceForge. Why is this even really a discussion? Gonna link to your SF from your My_?
EDIT:
Apparently SF is under new management and they are trying to change people's perception and are making good by a some accounts. I stand by what I said before I knew that, but I look forward to them contributing to the community in a way we can all respect.
It's not even death by a thousand cuts, which y'all have done to yourself, but you also just failed to provide anything in the last 10 years that felt like it wasn't a cop out. Ignoring the abysmal failures and adware issues, which should be a non starter anyway.
We have tons of options that aren't SourceForge. Why is this even really a discussion? Gonna link to your SF from your My_?
EDIT:
Apparently SF is under new management and they are trying to change people's perception and are making good by a some accounts. I stand by what I said before I knew that, but I look forward to them contributing to the community in a way we can all respect.
You are replying to the new CEO that bought sourceforge in 2016 and stopped the shady behavior and terrible practices.
Well... I can say honestly, I haven't looked at the site since the adware bundling in GIMP fiasco. That was so criminal, I just couldn't fathom looking again. I guess that's my bad, but is illustrative of the public perception hole they have to climb out of.
Good on 'em for trying to do better. I still fondly remember days of the first places I looked in the morning were SF and Slashdot.
My apologies for being out of the loop.
Good on 'em for trying to do better. I still fondly remember days of the first places I looked in the morning were SF and Slashdot.
My apologies for being out of the loop.
Thanks. We obviously have to do a better job of getting the word out. I appreciate what you said though.
I appreciate you getting out here to talk to people and trying to do the best by your platform.
I promise to give y'all a fair shake in the next few months and I wish you the best going forward.
I promise to give y'all a fair shake in the next few months and I wish you the best going forward.
Thanks my friend
I don't think a single person is considering moving from GitHub to Sourceforge.
No kidding. Sourceforge is the future of github, in the best case. Ads everywhere, binay spyware injected into your projects, etc.
You are talking about the old Sourceforge, since their recent acquisition they've done a great deal to clean up their act.
If people want to ditch GitHub because of Microsoft's actions 10 years ago, you can be sure they won't forgive SourceForge last year's actions... Or that would be some pretty heavy cognitive dissonance.
It was 3 years ago, and completely different ownership.
Microsoft has a new CEO, and all major execs have been replaced. This is apparently not enough, so I hardly see how the situation of SourceForge is better in this regard.
Even with all new execs and a new CEO, Microsoft's expensive operating system still features ads in the start menu. They still troll OSS projects with their patents. Their software still includes telemetry which can't (easily) be disabled.
But the same name? What a waste of time and money. Sourceforge is never coming back from the dead.
Still a million daily users and 500,000 projects. You can say it's dead because you don't use it, but we're just focused on doing right by them.
Even though you're (probably) right regarding those criticisms, it's representative of how people view SourceForge, and serves to show that
> I don't think a single person is considering moving from GitHub to Sourceforge.
is true.
> I don't think a single person is considering moving from GitHub to Sourceforge.
is true.
Arguments about migration itself aside, using SourceForge as a destination would last have occurred to me about 15 years ago. Very puzzling title.
It's like reading an article about how people don't use freshmeat any more. Freshmeat is apparently now owned by the same people as sourceforge and slashdot, so when they get that time machine back to 1999 hooked up, they're going to be rolling in the money.
I'm not sure if this will be good or bad for GitHub in the long run (it might actually bring some benefits to GitHub users, by adding more free services, e.g. free private repository), but still, Microsoft as a corporation is not open source friendly, as far as I know, the company still operates its own in-house patent troll and targeting open source related projects/services.
This is an old article, but I don't think a lot has changed since then: http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/fortune_archive/2007/...
If anyone knows if they have stopped making money suing or making dodge deals with Linux/Android vendors, I'd love to know, if so, I'd start to believe that they, as a corporation, are becoming more open source friendly.
There is a big difference in buying patents for the company's own protection, and buying patents for making money trolling other companies. And unfortunately M$ is on the second group, making money as a patent troll.
This is an old article, but I don't think a lot has changed since then: http://money.cnn.com/magazines/fortune/fortune_archive/2007/...
If anyone knows if they have stopped making money suing or making dodge deals with Linux/Android vendors, I'd love to know, if so, I'd start to believe that they, as a corporation, are becoming more open source friendly.
There is a big difference in buying patents for the company's own protection, and buying patents for making money trolling other companies. And unfortunately M$ is on the second group, making money as a patent troll.
"Microsoft bought GitHub? Let's move everything to SourceForge!" -- said no developer, ever.
even if the peanut gallery is still out on whether this is a 'smart move' from microsoft or not, the point in the article is real. Sourceforge and Gitlab are both having serious issues keeping pace with the number of users moving their projects.
gitlabs grafana instances are all but completely unresponsive as of this post. Timeouts and such from the web UI were rampant as of 0700am PST but they seem to be under control.
If i were a gambling man, I'd venture this to be the worst decision Microsoft has made since they hoovered up Minecraft for six billion dollars only to be left to watch PUBG and fortnight run miles past it, and multiple open source server implementations show up.
gitlabs grafana instances are all but completely unresponsive as of this post. Timeouts and such from the web UI were rampant as of 0700am PST but they seem to be under control.
If i were a gambling man, I'd venture this to be the worst decision Microsoft has made since they hoovered up Minecraft for six billion dollars only to be left to watch PUBG and fortnight run miles past it, and multiple open source server implementations show up.
the worst decision Microsoft has made since they hoovered up Minecraft for six billion dollars only to be left to watch PUBG and fortnight run miles past it
How is Minecraft in the same bucket as PUBG or Fortnite? Also, Microsoft bought Minecraft some 3 years before PUBG even launched. It has sold about 144 million copies and has 75 million monthly users. It's the second best-selling video game of all time behind Tetris. How is that a "worst decision"?
How is Minecraft in the same bucket as PUBG or Fortnite? Also, Microsoft bought Minecraft some 3 years before PUBG even launched. It has sold about 144 million copies and has 75 million monthly users. It's the second best-selling video game of all time behind Tetris. How is that a "worst decision"?
How can we actually quantify this alleged exodus? I'd like to see which projects are moving.