Microsoft buys GitHub - the end of the world? No.

[ microsoft  github  dont-panic  ]

This blog is and will continue to be hosted on Github pages. Microsoft hasn’t ruined everything, and there’s no need to panic (yet)!

Well it’s Monday and the panic is on. People are fleeing Github as fast as they can. I’m here to say: PLEASE STOP! The world is not ending, but I’m afraid that developers’ desire to run for other services like Bitbucket, Gitlab, or savannah will do more damage to Github than Microsoft ever can. Even if Microsoft makes Github better, it won’t matter if Github is a barren wasteland void of any life.

Look, Microsoft is no saint, and I’m by no means a fan. Skype has been ruined, Minecraft was a money grab, Edge is a failure, and Windows is a monopoly, but they have done good things too. They are the top contributor on GitHub, fifth largest contributor to Linux, Azure is awesome, and developers seem to love VS Code. Overall, it’s not the worst thing in the world. So lets talk about what happens now.

With developers jumping ship left and right, and those remaining in wait, watching and fearing what Microsoft has planned, they are under heavy pressure and scrutiny to not mess this up. Hopefully Microsoft goes above and beyond, but the minimum bar right now is not ruin everything. What does that entail? Don’t litter the page with ads, trackers, cookies, Microsoft login integrations, and generally slowing everything down. That’s the baseline, and its a pretty low bar. Don’t add anything. This step requires literally no effort, just take the plans to redo everything and then… don’t. Really - just don’t.

It would be nice to see them go above and beyond. With WSL and bash shipping with Windows 10, and now they own the platform on which Linux is developed, hopefully they will embrace FOSS in their own products. I personally would like to see WSL become more central and less of a gimmick feature. Maybe replace CMD with bash as their primary CLI. Or native support for ELF binaries. Or open sourcing a significant amount of the Windows internals and kernel. These are all nice things that I think would really restore faith in Microsoft right now. None of these have anything to do with Github, and are probably not in the forefront, but they are all signs that Microsoft really cares about FOSS, and will ease their new userbase.

As far as Github goes, better support of git CLI (outside of cygwin) in windows, features that have been asked for for a while but didnt have proper funding to do (I’m not sure what these are, but im sure they exist. Microsoft could afford to do more than the old company.), and improvements to products like Atom and Electron. Many people are scared that they will kill Atom because it competes with VS Code, but now that they own both, why would they? It would piss people off and theres no garentee Atom users would go to VS Code. More likely they would make it a subscription license but they know we wouldn’t pay for it. More than just not killing it, I would like to see some active development on Atom, Electron, and the like.

Ultimately they could mess this up entirely and most of the population (non developers) wouldn’t give a damn, but they would lose a ton of money in the process and I don’t think they would do that. Still, I think both sides have some fears, so lets address those:

Developers, please don’t:

  • panic
  • abandon ship immediately

Microsoft, please don’t:

  • Delete Atom. I’m sure VS Code is great, but I’m an Atom user. and so are many others. Leave it alone.

  • Change the Login system. I login to several things using Github. We don’t want a Microsoft account.

  • Litter the site with ads, trackers, analytics, or integrations. It’s good how it is, and loads fast enough.

  • Do anything Microsofty - This is a place for FOSS, and you do not own or have any right to our code. Respect that.

  • Act like this is just a purchase. We do not want money to be your goal. FOSS is about sharing and improving. Either make things better, listen to inputs and issues, merge some pull requests, and contribute, or leave.

  • Take us for granted. I’m not leaving yet, but many have and others are on the edge. Your audience is fragile right now, don’t upset us or we will go elsewhere.

Overall, It’s not the end of the world. I’m not jumping ship just yet. I’ll see how things go. But I will backup all my repos. Just in case.