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The latest move of Microsoft may skew FOSS 2018-06-03 the-latest-move-of-microsoft-may-skew-foss post Articles /img/blog/the-latest-move-of-microsoft-may-skew-foss.png Two more cents about the cataclysm to come...

A missing blog post image

Rumors are telling that Micro$oft wants to buy GitHub.

It may be one of the worst period for the FOSS community, because many projects are currently being built on GitHub.
They managed until today to demystify OpenSource contributions, and sometimes even software working-flows (everything is about the UX folks !).

Well, GitHub is not flawless but come on, let's do a little recap' of some Micro$oft acquisitions during the last decade :

  • Skype : Now it's shi**y (and the Linux client is A F***ING WEB APP) 😶

  • Minecraft : Now the "regular" way of p[l]aying is on Xbox... 😟

  • Nokia : Now Before having been sold back to HMD in 2015 (so within less than a year), their phones have been running a shi**y OS... 😕

  • LinkedIn : Now it's like Facebook (with a LOT OF bugs) 😒

  • SUSE : Now it's... Okay you got me, it was not really working before, but still 🤣

Imagine now what it could be[come] with Micro$oft running such a platform...
What the future may look like ?

  • Each one of the hosted projects moving out to GitLab main instance ? What a way to avoid a new SPOF...

  • The world ends up opening its eyes and starts mass-deploying its own Gitea or GitLab CE decentralized instances ?

  • Paying for contributing to a project on GitHub ?

  • Worst, paying for creating a public project on GitHub ?

  • Even worst, GitHub becoming a social network ?

And the price "proposed" is about what ? $2 Billions ? $5 Billions ? But anyway, what is it for a GAFAM in 2018 ?

Some messages in bottles for whoever you are (or member of) :

  • FOSS community : We shouldn't may not continue to build our softwares on a proprietary platform owned by this monster company we can't really trust...

  • GitHub : Don't sell out... Even if you chose to keep your business model (which does not respect FOSS morals), you'd continue to empower lots of interesting projects for our century. Don't forget before signing.

  • Micro$oft : Don't buy... Or if you do :

    • DO NOT change this platform in the same way you did for the others (it's working [good] for Christ sake)

    • Publish its source code (I know you are not really used to that, but you should give it a try more often. You'll see. It's pretty cool)

    • Reduce its SPOF aspect by authorizing (and building) platform federation

That's all folks, glad you read my 2 cents about the subject 😄

Post photo by "My Life Through A Lens"