Microsoft Is Said to Have Agreed to Acquire GitHub

Re:Microsoft Is Said to Have Agreed to Acquire GitHub by 0x0 on Sunday June 03, 2018 @05:27PM (#17222265)

Gitlab also lets you register private gitlab-runners on gitlab.com, which is a killer feature for running CI on setups that aren't plain docker-in-the-cloud (such as integration-testing apps that require resources on our LAN, or macOS/iOS builds with private keychain items that is much easier to configure on a local Mac). (A side bonus is that you don't even have to pay for any CI "minutes")

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Re:Microsoft Is Said to Have Agreed to Acquire GitHub by frutiger on Sunday June 03, 2018 @06:03PM (#17222539)

If you ever get something for free, remember something somewhere is subsidizing it. Whether that's the other paid accounts, which therefore must be uncompetitively priced, VC funding (which will eventually run out), or your data is sold.

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Re:Microsoft Is Said to Have Agreed to Acquire GitHub by wongarsu on Sunday June 03, 2018 @06:46PM (#17222833)

I can't speak for Gitlab, but offering free Bitbucket should easily pay for itself as introduction to the Atlassian ecosystem.

Our experience went like this: We got Bitbucket for out project for the good free private repos (and a few other reasons). When it came to choosing a ticket system, being on Bitbucket made choosing Jira a no-brainer (one of the best ticket systems, good integration with Bitbucket, familiar interface). Then we needed a better wiki for internal documentation, so we naturally went with Confluence.

So getting free Bitbucket heavily influenced our decision to buy two other products from the same company, and we are about to buy into their CI system (Bitbucket Pipelines, not the other one). We don't regret any of those choices, but they might have looked different if we were on Github.

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Re:Microsoft Is Said to Have Agreed to Acquire GitHub by Symbiote on Sunday June 03, 2018 @06:24PM (#17222676)

> your data is sold

It's now easier to see some of this, with the GDPR rules.

The Gitlab cookie page lists 80 "marketing" cookies which may be set: https://about.gitlab.com/privacy/cookies/

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Re:Microsoft Is Said to Have Agreed to Acquire GitHub by phs318u on Sunday June 03, 2018 @07:03PM (#17222940)

Wow. On the one hand I'm impressed with the openness (almost - what does purpose='unclassified' mean?), as well as the option to elect which cookie category I agree to. On the other hand... my, that's a lot of tracking!

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Re:Microsoft Is Said to Have Agreed to Acquire GitHub by Symbiote on Monday June 04, 2018 @05:30PM (#17232705)

Something similar (sometimes exactly this interface) is shown on about every third newly visited website I look at from the EU, since 25 May.

If you don't see this, it could be informative to use a British or Irish VPN (to keep an English language default) for a day or two.

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Re:Microsoft Is Said to Have Agreed to Acquire GitHub by the_duke on Sunday June 03, 2018 @07:04PM (#17222949)

Most of which you can now disable disallow on first visit.

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Re:Microsoft Is Said to Have Agreed to Acquire GitHub by ealloc on Sunday June 03, 2018 @06:39PM (#17222779)

I use a huge amount of open-source software which I do not believe is subsidized.

Some is, eg some linux/gnome devs are paid to contribute. But many smaller projects/components are volunteer-only.

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Re:Microsoft Is Said to Have Agreed to Acquire GitHub by frutiger on Sunday June 03, 2018 @07:27PM (#17223102)

> But many smaller projects/components are volunteer-only.

Someone is paying for it with their spare time. Spare time doesn't last forever.

If you're not paying for something, you should see it either as a temporary shortcut that eventually needs a more sustainable fix, or something you don't care about if it disappears.

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Re:Microsoft Is Said to Have Agreed to Acquire GitHub by syshum on Sunday June 03, 2018 @08:44PM (#17223527)

While I understand, and kinda agree, the idea that Volunteer only projects are not susceptible longer term and your implication that commercial products are more sustainable over a long term is provably false

Many many many many many commercial software projects, that people paid money for, are killed every single year.. Many other volunteer only projects last for decades, some of which have been critical to the very foundation of the web.

So no "if you are not paying for you should see it as a temporary shortcut" is a completely false statement

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Re:Microsoft Is Said to Have Agreed to Acquire GitHub by maskedSlacker on Sunday June 03, 2018 @07:30PM (#17223121)

It's subsidized by those volunteers' time. Time that could otherwise be spent on other things.

Granted, there's nothing nefarious about this, but there isn't anything necessarily nefarious about the fact that anything you get for free is being paid for somewhere else. Just potentially nefarious, if you don't know what's paying for it.

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Re:Microsoft Is Said to Have Agreed to Acquire GitHub by caf on Sunday June 03, 2018 @08:38PM (#17223501)

...the other paid accounts, which therefore must be uncompetitively priced,...

That doesn't follow. If the paid accounts are selling, then they must be priced appropriately relative to their competition and the value they provide. The cost doesn't factor into it - and free accounts are just a marketing cost, like putting up a billboard.

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Re:Microsoft Is Said to Have Agreed to Acquire GitHub by uponbe on Sunday June 03, 2018 @06:28PM (#17222719)

A public and a private repo costs the same to host, so I don’t see your point

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Re:Microsoft Is Said to Have Agreed to Acquire GitHub by aphextron on Sunday June 03, 2018 @05:28PM (#17222280)

I'd say +1 for GitLab. I just checked it out and like the UI better than GitHub anyways. I'm switching over and not looking back.

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Re:Microsoft Is Said to Have Agreed to Acquire GitHub by apple4ever on Sunday June 03, 2018 @05:47PM (#17222428)

That's one big reason why we switched.

The other was the self hosted option.

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Re:Microsoft Is Said to Have Agreed to Acquire GitHub by thinkpad20 on Sunday June 03, 2018 @07:04PM (#17222947)

I switched jobs and went from Github to Bitbucket about 6 months ago. I've found bitbucket to be consistently and noticeably slower than github both in its web UI and in pushes/pulls, with more downtime. You pay for those private repos one way or another.

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Re:Microsoft Is Said to Have Agreed to Acquire GitHub by olingern on Monday June 04, 2018 @05:32AM (#17226035)

I too felt this pain. UI feels "heavy" in comparison to Github.

There are obvious, simple updates that could be made to the UI to fix significant pain points. This one [1] brought me much pain every time I installed a new package via yarn.

1 - https://bitbucket.org/site/master/issues/7086/add-the-abilit...

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Re:Microsoft Is Said to Have Agreed to Acquire GitHub by viraptor on Sunday June 03, 2018 @06:30PM (#17222732)

> Github's just got the mindshare going for it.

But in more ways than just the users. If you want tu use most of the popular integrations, the often github-only. Things like TravisCI are suddenly what makes me open a new project on GH rather than GL.

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Re:Microsoft Is Said to Have Agreed to Acquire GitHub by miguelrochefort on Sunday June 03, 2018 @05:25PM (#17222240)

I'm sure GitHub will introduce free private repos soon enough.

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Re:Microsoft Is Said to Have Agreed to Acquire GitHub by ergomarky on Sunday June 03, 2018 @05:33PM (#17222315)

I'd be surprised if the announcement didn't also come with that change. Easiest way to even the field.

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Re:Microsoft Is Said to Have Agreed to Acquire GitHub by sdesol on Sunday June 03, 2018 @07:43PM (#17223203)

If Microsoft decides to make GitHub free for all, this can honestly have a devastating affect on GitLab and Bitbucket. I really think Microsoft is a lot more interested in:

- capturing developer data for ML/AI research

- identify new product ideas

- identify ways to improve existing products

- create a funnel to existing products

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Re:Microsoft Is Said to Have Agreed to Acquire GitHub by rainbowmverse on Sunday June 03, 2018 @05:34PM (#17222333)

Especially since Microsoft's own version control thing has this.

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Re:Microsoft Is Said to Have Agreed to Acquire GitHub by t_treesap on Sunday June 03, 2018 @06:20PM (#17222648)

Well, sort of. It's limited to 5 contributors, which is kind of a big deal if you're on a serious team.

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Re:Microsoft Is Said to Have Agreed to Acquire GitHub by sdesol on Sunday June 03, 2018 @07:25PM (#17223080)

If you have more than 5 contributors, you can probably afford to spend $5/user/month If that isn't the case, then GitLab/Gogs/Gitea/etc. is probably the better route to go.

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Re:Microsoft Is Said to Have Agreed to Acquire GitHub by _emacsomancer_ on Monday June 04, 2018 @02:01AM (#17225040)

They do have free private repos for academic researchers already.

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Re:Microsoft Is Said to Have Agreed to Acquire GitHub by bamboozled on Sunday June 03, 2018 @06:24PM (#17222680)

What makes you think the same thing won’t happen to GitLab?

No one would’ve dreamed of this happening 5-10 years back.

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Re:Microsoft Is Said to Have Agreed to Acquire GitHub by indigochill on Monday June 04, 2018 @02:43AM (#17225192)

I expect it'll happen to Gitlab at some point, but the beauty of self-hosted is that I can cut ties with the organization and continue using their software anyway because it's entirely running on my machine.

Which, incidentally, is just one reason I usually strongly prefer self-hosted options over SaaS. You're not signing a pact to become beholden to the business whims of a third party.

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Re:Microsoft Is Said to Have Agreed to Acquire GitHub by bamboozled on Monday June 04, 2018 @09:13AM (#17227384)

Good luck hosting an unmaintined piece of software though, there is no guarantee it will just instantly have community backing.

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Re:Microsoft Is Said to Have Agreed to Acquire GitHub by sytse on Sunday June 03, 2018 @07:37PM (#17223170)

GitLab took external investments will have a liquidity event at some point. That means an acquisition or an IPO. Right now we're aiming for an IPO https://about.gitlab.com/strategy/#goals as we have since 2015 when we took the first external investment.

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