Generally I have always hated the argument that anyone opposed to anything needs to have a better solution before their opinion is valid and will be taken into account.
Sometimes it's clear how a particular solution is negative but beyond that we don't have the breath or depth of knowledge to suggest the alternative or it is not our job to spend the time to come up with one. Yet we may have enough experience in a particular aspect of it to know about a significant downside of the choice.
It always just seems like a way of dismissing valid criticism by someone who supports the choice and not addressing the criticism.
There often isn’t a good solution, only a bunch of “bad” solutions. Pointing out that they are bad is useless to everyone. GitHub wanted to be a successful independent company. That failed. What is the next least bad solution before bankruptcy?
> Pointing out that they are bad is useless to everyone.
This is false.
Some people may not have given the matter consideration. When they don't they may accept the bad solution as normal, and "normal" often rightly or wrongly leads people to jump to the conclusion that the solution is proper. I've many times had to argue against something where the argument in favor was "we've always done it that way."
Pointing out that a solution is bad records challenges that can be met and satisfied in producing a new solution. But if no one notices, or those who do never say anything, then people will tend to assume it is normal and therefore proper.
I personally think it’s fair to be catiously optimisitic at best. I for one don’t have the solution but I don’t feel like all the sudden I need to trust Microsoft.
That being said I like the direction they are going in but I’m sure people liked the direction they were going in before thier change of heart towards open source too.
I always thought people posting content on Tumblr/Medium/WordPress were making a mistake, that they were getting very little in return for their work. It's starting to become clear that hosting your project on someone else's servers has many of the same issues.
GitHub provides a central, well-known "hub" for code collaboration. Due to its success and popularity, it has achieved a network effect that is really difficult to replicate. (Google wasn't able to do it.) If GitHub were to go away or deterioriate in some way, something else would inevitably take its place.
Putting your project on github is the best way to ensure that you have the largest possible number of eyes on it. And if something better comes along, you can always copy your repo there. I don't see what you lose by hosting on github.
"You can't complain until you provide something better" is one of the oldest bullshit arguments in the book.
If I go to a doctor with an ailment, or the Agora with a public grievance, the notion of admitting and communicating that there's a problem is an essential step. Identifying etiologies, goals, and solutions ("getting there from here") are also necessary, but independent steps that need not be initiated or accomplished by the same people.
Sorry, but I'm tired of this very tired trope.
A key problem is that infrastructure, information, and information exchanges play poorly with markets and market-oriented institutions: for-profit corporations.
If markets are your problem, marketing-it-harder -- selling the company to a larger and more abusive monopolist -- will probably mean you'll be having a bad day.
GitHub, Inc. is a for-profit organization too, as are its biggest competitors. If you're concerned about the interaction between profit and code hosting, that doesn't have much to do with this acquisition.
Of course you know why as the arguments of both sides were presented here ad nauseam, you just aren't convinced by them. In short, people who witnessed faul play by Microsoft that lasted for many years and their attitude towards users as presented in Windows 10 aren't convinced they should be the owner of GitHub.
Readit News
Sometimes it's clear how a particular solution is negative but beyond that we don't have the breath or depth of knowledge to suggest the alternative or it is not our job to spend the time to come up with one. Yet we may have enough experience in a particular aspect of it to know about a significant downside of the choice.
It always just seems like a way of dismissing valid criticism by someone who supports the choice and not addressing the criticism.
Edit: grammar & spelling
This is false.
Some people may not have given the matter consideration. When they don't they may accept the bad solution as normal, and "normal" often rightly or wrongly leads people to jump to the conclusion that the solution is proper. I've many times had to argue against something where the argument in favor was "we've always done it that way."
Pointing out that a solution is bad records challenges that can be met and satisfied in producing a new solution. But if no one notices, or those who do never say anything, then people will tend to assume it is normal and therefore proper.
Only if the people making the decision are comptent and already considered the issues.
MS not buying GitHub?
The complaints against MS buying it are not because are not made with the consideration that the deal is bad for GitHub itself.
That being said I like the direction they are going in but I’m sure people liked the direction they were going in before thier change of heart towards open source too.
Putting your project on github is the best way to ensure that you have the largest possible number of eyes on it. And if something better comes along, you can always copy your repo there. I don't see what you lose by hosting on github.
OMG, what about the whole antitrust case of the USA against Microsoft in the 2000ies?
I can't read any other paragraph written by "journalists" like those.
If I go to a doctor with an ailment, or the Agora with a public grievance, the notion of admitting and communicating that there's a problem is an essential step. Identifying etiologies, goals, and solutions ("getting there from here") are also necessary, but independent steps that need not be initiated or accomplished by the same people.
Sorry, but I'm tired of this very tired trope.
A key problem is that infrastructure, information, and information exchanges play poorly with markets and market-oriented institutions: for-profit corporations.
If markets are your problem, marketing-it-harder -- selling the company to a larger and more abusive monopolist -- will probably mean you'll be having a bad day.
MS is the biggest contributor on GitHub, and VSCode/TypeScript are exemplary pieces of open source projects.
Maybe we should wait and see before bashing MS and migrating everything on another centralized for-profit platform?
Of course you know why as the arguments of both sides were presented here ad nauseam, you just aren't convinced by them. In short, people who witnessed faul play by Microsoft that lasted for many years and their attitude towards users as presented in Windows 10 aren't convinced they should be the owner of GitHub.
Deleted Comment