Microsoft bought Github, is this the end of Linux and Open Source?

A lot of media has been talking about Microsoft’s acquisition of Github, happened some days ago.

I’m not that happy about it and moved my Commander Genius repo to Gitlab: https://gitlab.com/Dringgstein/Commander-Genius

What the media talks about it is mostly neutral and the company promised to leave Github as is so it can grow further. I wonder why to buy it then. I don’t trust this company and you also should not. I believe it is more about embrace, extend and extinguish strategy they applied in the past. The media should get on this point and also remind the readers of how this company monopolized its landscape. Yes, time has passed, Billy and Monkey boy are no more; Satya is a nice guy, blah blah blah. There still are traces and implemented strategies found in their software which show their goal of monopolization. Do not get fooled by them. Windows spies on you, Exchange still does not support CardDav (since 2006) or CalDav (since 2008) which makes it harder using other clients like Mozilla Thunderbird with their services.

Github was the biggest service of git repositories in the internet. Now Microsoft has the power to watch even into the private repositories. I feel bad for people who where paying for such advantages. And here I see the reason for some self-hosting. People, don’t trust big companies and mighty clouds! Better build your own cloud or trust someone who did not defraud you. There are much better alternatives out there: NextCloud, Zarafa, SoGO just to mention a few. Of your data is stored to media that is physically accessible by yourself you won’t run into such risks. It is your data after all.

Regarding Open Source and Linux It is not the end! Many projects like mine moved to Gitlab or Bitbucket. The Kernel was hosted at github, but this was more as a fork. The real repo always has been here: https://git.kernel.org/  no big deal.

People like me who really love open source and do not pretend to like certain companies will keep up the good work.

Nothing against Microsoft. You pay for their software, you use it, their employees get paid. That is fine. What is not fine is trying to sabotage the competition instead of making their products better, which really is required.

The update manager of Windows 10 is a big mess and seems to be worse compared to the one of Windows 7. Debian like other distros solved the problem of package dependencies in 1993 and today provide a very smart and fast update manager which also updates your installed software as a whole. And the best thing about it: I can decide when or when not to update. I can also decide which software is installed on my system. My two cents…