GitHub rivals gain from Microsoft acquisition but it's no mass exodus, yet

By -
GitHub competitors have picked up thousands of new developers but in relative terms the numbers are small.



  Rivals of now Microsoft-owned code host GitHub are touting gains from developers who aren't happy with the acquisition and what it could mean.GitLab and Atlassian's BitBucket are both playing up to negative reactions towards the acquisition and uncertainty among developers about the future.

Both sites say developers are migrating in larger numbers to their respective sites.
GitLab said yesterday it had imported over 100,000 repositories from GitHub since news of the deal was confirmed on Monday.Microsoft said it is paying $7.5bn in stock for GitHub as part of an effort to win developers and give a boost to Azure and the other developer tools it offers. Despite losing some developers, these numbers migrating are minuscule compared with the 85 million repositories on GitHub.
BitBucket also claims to have seen a noticeable spike in GitHub migrations since then, too. It hasn't provided numbers but highlights developers who felt sour about the acquisition and vowed to leave GitHub.

There have been mixed feelings among developers about the deal. As Steven J Vaughan-Nichols pointed out this week, some open-source advocates still distrust Microsoft, even under the friendlier leadership of Satya Nadalla compared with Steve Ballmer, who in 2001 called Linux "a cancer".
Others argue it's time to move on and accept that Microsoft is no longer an evil corporation hell-bent on killing open source. Instead, due to the cloud, it has every reason to support it.
And some believe it could be a competitive threat, allowing Microsoft to peer into rivals' software under development.
But while Nadella said the GitHub acquisition strengthened Microsoft's "commitment to developer freedom, openness and innovation", it is also clear that the purchase will help bring Microsoft's developer tools and services to new audiences.

Slides presented by Microsoft this week highlighted that this approach would include Azure cloud services, also alongside AWS and Google Cloud. The slides also suggest GitHub users could soon start seeing various Azure services added to GitHub Marketplace.

"In the future, developers will be able to discover, adopt, consume and pay for everything they need in one place. This includes developer and cloud services from Microsoft and any party that chooses to participate in this open marketplace."In the mean time, developers who fear the future of GitHub under Microsoft can enjoy being catered to by smaller rivals like GitLab.

Comments

Post a Comment

Popular Posts

Hacker steals data of millions of Bulgarians, emails it to local media

By -
Image
  Source of the data breach appears to be the country's National Revenue Agency A mysterious hacker has stolen the personal details of millions of Bulgarians and has emailed download links to the stolen data to local news publications. The data's origin is believed to be the country's National Revenue Agency (NRA), a department of the Bulgarian Ministry of Finance. In a  message posted on its website  on Monday, the NRA said it was working with the Ministry of the Interior and the State Agency for National Security (SANS) to investigate the hack. "We are currently verifying whether the data is real," said the NRA. Hours after this article's publication, the Bulgarian Ministry of the Interior  confirmed the hack . HACKER STOLE 110 DATABASES, LEAKED 57 According to reports from local media [ 1 ,  2 ,  3 ,  4 ,  5 ], who received part of the data, the hacker said they stole the personal details of over five million Bulgarians, of the country's total populatio
Read more

​Linux totally dominates supercomputers

By -
Image
It finally happened. Today, all 500 of the world's top 500 supercomputers are running Linux. Linux rules supercomputing. This day has been coming since 1998, when Linux first appeared on the TOP500 Supercomputer list . Today it finally happened:  All 500 of the world's fastest supercomputers are running Linux . The last two non-Linux systems, a pair of Chinese IBM POWER computers running AIX, dropped off the  November 2017 TOP500 Supercomputer list . Overall, China now leads the supercomputing race with 202 computers to the US' 144. China also leads the US in aggregate performance. China's supercomputers represent 35.4 percent of the Top500's flops, while the US trails with 29.6 percent. With an anti-science regime in charge of the government, America will only continue to see its technological lead decline. When the  first Top500 supercomputer list was compiled in June 1993 , Linux was barely more than a toy. It hadn't even adopted Tux as its masc
Read more

Microsoft tries to stem its self-made collaboration-tool confusion

By -
Image
Microsoft is using this week's Ignite conference to try to help clarify its collaboration-tool strategy. Here's how SharePoint, Teams and Yammer figure in the mix. Choice is good. But too much choice, especially when it comes to collaboration tools, has been a problem for Microsoft. This isn't news to customers, partners or Microsoft execs themselves. But at the company's Ignite IT Pro conference in Orlando this week, Microsoft execs took a step to try to clarify the company's strategy and messaging in this area. Microsoft Office 365 Marketing chief Ron Markezich kicked off the conference this week with a slide entitled "Microsoft 365 Teamwork: Where to Start a Conversation." That slide attempts to do what  Microsoft initially attempted with a 60-plus-page whitepaper : Clarify which collaboration tools customers should use when. The slide, which features SharePoint -- and its files, sites and content storage at the center -- is broken down into t
Read more