In a bit of bizarre cognitive dissonance or intellectual dishonesty on my end, I have publicly told people that I am ok with Microsoft's purchase of Github, but have moved all my projects over to Gitlab.

It's not that I think Microsoft will do a bad job (and the issue isn't about Microsoft specifically) it just made me realize something that I logically knew but never thought about: Github can be bought, and it's a near-monopoly.

We take advantage of a seemingly altruistic service like Github, but I now process that they're a for-profit corporation, and there is no reason they couldn't exploit that fact. While I don't think they would do this, Microsoft could easily deprioritize projects that compete with their products, or surround popular releases with adware (like Sourceforge did a few years ago).

Gitlab is a for-profit corporation as well, so they're not immune to this, but the difference is that I can easily run my own Gitlab server if I really wanted to, or fork the project and make "Tombert's Cool Gitlab Competitor" whenever I need to. Inherently, Gitlab has created its own competition, which I think can shield a bit from my concerns.

Also, I've grown to really like the Gitlab interface; maybe that's a good enough reason to switch.