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MS buys Github. It's time to move on. — Parallax Forums

MS buys Github. It's time to move on.

Microsoft is to buy Github https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-44351214

It makes me very sad to have to abandon github and move on. Whatever junk I have on github will be making its way to Bitbucket and or gitlab ASAP.

Suggest Parallax do likewise.

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Comments

  • Heater. wrote: »
    Microsoft is to buy Github https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-44351214

    It makes me very sad to have to abandon github and move on. Whatever junk I have on github will be making its way to Bitbucket and or gitlab ASAP.

    Suggest Parallax do likewise.
    Why?

  • Microsoft has stated that they plan to leave Github as-is. They have the resources to be able to do that for the indefinite future. Github might have been bought by someone else who could have tried to monetize it in ways that would eventually destroy it.
  • Microsoft has really bought into open-source, even open-sourcing VS Code, Powershell, Ubuntu Subsystem, etc. They are also the biggest user (by commits) of GitHub. I'm personally excited for this as they aren't going to burn the OSS community and likely make integrations even more powerful. This isn't the Ballmer Microsoft of 15 years ago.
  • It'll be interesting to see what happens to gitfs, since MS has a different file system with the same name.

    -Phil
  • Ken GraceyKen Gracey Posts: 7,392
    edited 2018-06-04 21:13
    Heater. wrote: »
    Microsoft is to buy Github https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-44351214

    It makes me very sad to have to abandon github and move on. Whatever junk I have on github will be making its way to Bitbucket and or gitlab ASAP.

    Suggest Parallax do likewise.

    Really! Let me just take three engineers off their current work and alert them of this emergency so they can spend the next week moving our content.

    We're not making any rash decisions around here. As soon as we get familiar with one platform it is changed, retired, bought, made "not popular" or something else that renders it the wrong tool. I guarantee you that if we made decisions based on emotion we'd be long gone by now (and there would be no Propeller 2 either).

    Sit tight, let's not get excited and just see what happens.
  • jmgjmg Posts: 15,173
    edited 2018-06-04 23:56
    Ken Gracey wrote: »
    Heater. wrote: »
    Microsoft is to buy Github https://www.bbc.com/news/technology-44351214

    It makes me very sad to have to abandon github and move on. Whatever junk I have on github will be making its way to Bitbucket and or gitlab ASAP.

    Suggest Parallax do likewise.

    Really! Let me just take three engineers off their current work and alert them of this emergency so they can spend the next week moving our content.

    We're not making any rash decisions around here. As soon as we get familiar with one platform it is changed, retired, bought, made "not popular" or something else that renders it the wrong tool. I guarantee you that if we made decisions based on emotion we'd be long gone by now (and there would be no Propeller 2 either).

    Sit tight, let's not get excited and just see what happens.

    Yup, time to wait and see... and as always, cherry-pick pick the best bits of open source ...


    Note the largest project on github is apparently Microsoft's Visual Studio Code, which one Heater. made this earlier comment about

    I would prefer it if this were done with Microsoft's Visual Studio Code. VS Code is open source and cross-platform. Visual Studio is not.]

    There are already some looking at P1/P2 support using Microsoft's Visual Studio Code, given that Visual Studio Code is getting mature.

    Addit: inside VS code I see support for PlatformIO, which looks to already cover much of the MCU space.
    https://github.com/platformio/platformio-examples

    and drilling into that, looking for smallest PCBs with Debug support finds a few close to $10
    https://os.mbed.com/platforms/FRDM-KL05Z/?utm_source=platformio&utm_medium=docs
    https://www.pjrc.com/store/teensylc.html

    None of the 8b Ardunio boards seem to include Debug=Yes, but the newest Ardunios have larger flash USB bridge parts, so that might come.. ?
  • K2K2 Posts: 693
    Heater, thank you for not letting us down! While your post was inevitable, it is still a thrill when it happens. :)
  • I will continue to use github. One thing MS has always been decent at is developer tools. VS, Code, etc. are all excellent (in my opinion).
    Feel free to put on your tin foil hats and flee from anything MS buys, but that's your loss in most cases.
  • evanhevanh Posts: 15,915
    "Head in the sand" would be the appropriately *equal* response there Roy. M$ do have a documented history.

  • Heater.Heater. Posts: 21,230
    edited 2018-06-05 14:09
    It always amazes me how emotive these discussions become. Among what are supposedly rational engineering minds.
    All this talk of "it is still a thrill when it happens", "tin hats", "heads in the sand", whatever, is just a put down for your opponent in a discussion without saying anything substantive.

    Those interested in a somewhat rational summary of the different perspectives of this issue one might find this short video by Bryan Lunduke of interest.



    He puts my point of view better than I can.

    By the way, I love Visual Studio Code. It works brilliantly well, has good performance, is open source and cross-platform. Wonderful.
  • When GitLab attracts all the migrating projects it will might attract the next buyer too.
    So moving over there is a solution for a only while.

    We need a P2P VCS!
  • TorTor Posts: 2,010
    The problem is that everything MS has acquired goes downhill. Skype,whatever. They wreck it all. Therefore I don't buy into that 'we'll leave it as it is' propaganda, for one second. They'll poison it, as they've always done.
  • Heater. wrote: »
    Those interested in a somewhat rational summary of the different perspectives of this issue one might find this short video by Bryan Lunduke of interest.
    Did you forget the link?

  • Heater.Heater. Posts: 21,230
    Oops, yep. Link is there now.
  • Interesting comments in that video. Thanks for sharing. The parts I thought were worth pulling out, paraphrased:
    In the past, Microsoft used the phrase "embrace, extend, exterminate."
    Not to say that they are still following that, but if they were... this is what it would look like.

    Yea... that's fun. He's absolutely right. I haven't seen anything that would imply they're tipping back toward that direction and I really hope they're not.... but he's right. If they were tipping back that direction, this is exactly the right way to do it. Scary.
    They might rename GitHub to Microsoft Visual Studio Repoistory

    Gr.... I hope they don't. They haven't renamed Skype yet. Oh wait... yes they did! Lync! So maybe the public-facing GitHub.com will remain GitHub long-term, but their internally hosted product (as in, you host it on your own server) will be branded differently? I could see that. In any case, if that's the worst that comes from this, I call it a win.

    Only time will tell. Personally, I'm taking the optimistic path and holding my hopes high. I think they'll do right by the community.
  • ha, Sourceforge has it there right on top of the site...

    Migrate from GitHub to SourceForge with this tool. A lot has changed for the better at SourceForge recently.

    Mike
  • Heater.Heater. Posts: 21,230
    Bitbucket also has a very simple import from Github mechanism. My company used it a couple of years ago. Should only take Parallax an hour or so to move all their repos.
  • yetiyeti Posts: 818
    edited 2018-06-05 15:48
    Heater. wrote: »
    Bitbucket also has a very simple import from Github mechanism. My company used it a couple of years ago. Should only take Parallax an hour or so to move all their repos.
    Plus...
    Ken Gracey wrote: »
    Let me just take three engineers off their current work and alert them of this emergency so they can spend the next week moving our content.
    ...so it will take only one tock or so...

    \\o     o//     \o/

    Ok... will that migrate issues and other uncloneable stuff too?
  • Never a big fan of M $ since CP/M days and the $#!+ they pulled early on. Currently use a surface pro for lots of work functions; they really got that one right.... until they started forcing Win 10 on it. The pen function seemed more reliable and predictable under 8.1 Than now. But like all companies, they make changes, not all good, not all bad.

    IBM was no different with OS/2. I always suspected IBM had a case of mad brain syndrome going on and found out later that there was (rumored to be) an internal group actively working against it to retain special pricing for the resale of Windows on their pcs. Surprised, but not really, seemed to explain IBM's behavior though. So that's my prism, or not so rosy colored glasses.

    As long as they don't turn into SourceForge I'll be happy. Tired of being over-run with ads and BS that feels more like scamware.

    The thing to watch going forward is the T&Cs. Realizing they will have direct access to ALL code on that site, what is to protect the developers from M $ from going back to the "Halloween Papers" days, of them identifying a potential product or competitor and out spending or otherwise burying the project they want to grab. I doubt they will change much of what is github's function though. They by now may realize that a new github-like site can be created and movement to it would be swift if M $ github fails the smell test at anytime, even a rumour of such given their history would cause a big hit if there is an alternative.

    Then of course, when does the pricing structure change..... by how much and other little things, like say cloning a project is free....... for now........
  • Speculation on what a company might do is really pointless - if they do bad things, time to move. Until then, why not stay with a state of the art, stable, and widely used system? No reason to move until one is given.
  • geo_leeman wrote: »
    Speculation on what a company might do is really pointless - if they do bad things, time to move. Until then, why not stay with a state of the art, stable, and widely used system? No reason to move until one is given.

    Exactly. Especially if it's as easy to migrate as people indicate. From a business perspective, theres's little reason to incur an expense when you can't realize any obvious return on investment.

    Ken Gracey
  • Ken,
    Others may like to think it will be trivial to move (only an hour, yeah right), but the reality is likely not as easy as they think. You have many people from all over contributing to your projects on github, so first of all it's not as simple as getting your own staff to switch (which could be done in a reasonable time frame). Everyone working in Parallax's github would need to migrate also, and what of their forks with changes that aren't merged back yet? What about all the history and linkage that would likely be lost?

    If Microsoft changes things at github that causes a problem, then sure move on to something else, but until then it's just the "anti-MS" crowd crying wolf again.
  • Heater.Heater. Posts: 21,230
    edited 2018-06-05 19:04
    Roy,
    What about all the history and linkage that would likely be lost?
    History would not be lost.

    Let's say the "master" upstream repo is in Github. And you have a ton of developers cloning that, hacking their own clones and branches and so on. Like you do with git.

    Then that "master" repo disappears from Github and is cloned to somewhere else, say Bitbucket. The history is not lost. All clones of git repos are peers.

    All the developers need to do is change their git config to point to the new "master" repo. And continue as if nothing had happened.

    My company did this twice already. Moving from our in house git repos, to Github, to Bitbucket.

    I agree there is a little problem with other github features, like issue tracking and such. As far as I can tell Parallax does not pay much attention to those.






  • Heater.Heater. Posts: 21,230
    geo_leeman,
    Speculation on what a company might do is really pointless...
    OK. Yep.
    ...if they do bad things, time to move.
    MS has a history of lying, cheating and stealing (I don't use those words lightly) dating back to the earliest days of the company. How much abuse do you want to take before moving on?

    Or more currently, is github going to ask me if they can give my account details to someone else? I guess not. Time to move.
    Until then, why not stay with a state of the art, stable, and widely used system?
    Indeed. This is git we are talking about. Created by Linus Torvalds to be resilient to this kind of problem.

    My beef is not with MS here. My beef is with the coagulation of everything into the hands of the few. Whoever they are.



  • jmgjmg Posts: 15,173
    edited 2018-06-05 20:22
    Roy Eltham wrote: »
    Ken,
    Others may like to think it will be trivial to move (only an hour, yeah right), but the reality is likely not as easy as they think. You have many people from all over contributing to your projects on github, so first of all it's not as simple as getting your own staff to switch (which could be done in a reasonable time frame). Everyone working in Parallax's github would need to migrate also, and what of their forks with changes that aren't merged back yet? What about all the history and linkage that would likely be lost?

    If Microsoft changes things at github that causes a problem, then sure move on to something else, but until then it's just the "anti-MS" crowd crying wolf again.

    Yes. moving anything needs real care, and you also bang into the classic issue of
    "The man with one watch always knows what time it is, the man with two, is never sure"

    I'd certainly wait to see if something else does emerge as the next defacto Github, otherwise there is the additional risk of backing the wrong horse, (and moving camp yet again)
    Heater. wrote: »
    By the way, I love Visual Studio Code. It works brilliantly well, has good performance, is open source and cross-platform. Wonderful.
    I had a quick glance at that, and it seems to have Microcontroller ecosystem support, and some debug capability. I don't have any of the Eval boards they list here, but they go down to $10+,
    Parallax should put some staff onto checking into the usage aspects of that.
  • Heater.Heater. Posts: 21,230
    jmg,
    Yes. moving anything needs real care, and you also bang into the classic issue of...
    Except moving a git repo is just a simple command away "git clone.."
    "The man with one watch always knows what time it is, the man with two, is never sure"
    Not sure what you mean but...git may not know what the time is, but it has a very strict idea of what order things happen in.
  • jmgjmg Posts: 15,173
    Heater. wrote: »
    jmg,
    Yes. moving anything needs real care, and you also bang into the classic issue of...
    Except moving a git repo is just a simple command away "git clone.."
    "The man with one watch always knows what time it is, the man with two, is never sure"
    Not sure what you mean but...git may not know what the time is, but it has a very strict idea of what order things happen in.

    The issue is not git itself, it is all the links already in peoples posts/blogs/docs.
    Then, with two copies in place, which one is the most recent / most active ?
    Easy to create a shambles, purely to avoid an imagined problem...
  • Heater.Heater. Posts: 21,230
    jmg,

    I do see what you mean.

    Such is the magic of the Open Source world. Just because you put up a project does not mean that you own it. If you don't pay attention and cooperate with the developers attracted to your project, it can up sticks and move on without you.
    Then, with two copies in place, which one is the most recent / most active ?
    A simple command, "git log", will tell you.
    Easy to create a shambles, purely to avoid an imagined problem...
    I see no shambles in cloning a thing from one place to another. Sure it needs some links updating perhaps. No worse than the billion links broken everyday on the net.

    Why do you say "imagined problem" ?





  • ARS published an article last year that describes what Microsoft had to do to migrate their codebase over to git. I have to think that Microsoft has continued down this road with other teams. Purchasing GitHub is an insurance policy to preserve their substantial investment in moving to git.
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