We knew it: Chris Wanstrath (@defunkt) has never been a free software guy. Now it’s official:
“I’m extremely proud of what GitHub and our community have accomplished over the past decade, and I can’t wait to see what lies ahead. The future of software development is bright, and I’m thrilled to be joining forces with M̵̧͍̂i̴̧͊̈c̴͉̾r̵͙̮̈o̴̳̜͗s̸͚̖͗̎o̸̰͗p̶̢͖̂h̶̟͈͑ to help make it a reality,” Wanstrath said. “Their focus on developers lines up perfectly with our own, and their scale, tools and global cloud will play a huge role in making GitHub even more valuable for developers everywhere.”
I can’t wait to see M$ CEO welcome RMS in the pinnacle of the Redmond company.
In the meantime, so many integration appeared in Github, with Docker, etc. that a lot of free software working with Github is compromised. What will Gitlab say? I’m not sure moving from a U.S. company to an EU company helps at all in this case. I can foresee a split in the U.S. ‘open-source’ ‘community’ and between U.S. and EU developers. G̸͍͇̚á̶̙̘g̷̋͝ͅģ̶̓l̸͍̀e̸̻͐ had not been able to disrupt the free software movement so much, even by pouring their advertising cash pornographically around. But who wants to live with M$?
Gittorrent? Mango? They have other issues.
Maybe it’s time to look back at what the free software alternatives are – and cry – to embrace really decentralized alternatives to fulfill the need for a public digital infrastructure that is not sold to corporate interests.
No frankly, Github being an ‘open-source’ fan is one sorry thing, but it being part of M$ is a way worse danger to technological sovereignty.
Of course it won’t change a thing with regard to Github and might even make M$ happy that the free software people are moving away. Maybe it will even split the community further when free software people will accept to remain on M$ Github… That will simply reflect the current lack of interest in addressing community concerns.
The consolidation of Github as a monopoly with nearly each and every free software project living or moving there has been a problem for a long time.
By working on frankly a lot of projects on Github I’ve been a part of this problem myself, but it was always hard not to acknowledge that this centralization is harmful. Github is a proprietary platform with proprietary extensions - extremely convenient, too convenient for people to want to move. Which means that it’s a 100% perfect match for Microsoft acquisition. But really, this acquisition is not even an acerbation, it’s just the natural consequence of the centralization that has been staring us in the face for too long: No field should rely on one single vendor with a near-monopoly.
Let’s all migrate away and let this behemoth splinter, but let it splinter in a million little pieces rather that three or four large ones. To hell with monopolies and single points of failure.
