Microsoft now in control of GitHub means they have the kill switch of Open Source

1    05 Jun 2018 20:10 by u/roznak

Microsoft now in control of GitHub means they have the kill switch of Open Source.

Imagine that Microsoft now tells the Open Source developers: Pay for your source code or else we delete your account

11 comments

0 u/RedditIsTheBest111 05 Jun 2018 20:21

I don't like how much easier it makes it for them to take away our control of the products we pay for.

0 u/roznak [OP] 05 Jun 2018 20:28

You can fight back. Poison the well, generate projects that are worthless so confuse the AI they will use to traverse every single byte of your source code. It actually would be an interesting experiment to see how we can change the AI so it turns on against their own masters.

0 u/RedditIsTheBest111 05 Jun 2018 20:42

Some kind of code that corrupts the ai? Sounds like you are trying to destabilize the creation of our robot overlord.

0 u/roznak [OP] 05 Jun 2018 20:46

Survival of the fittest. The one that controls the AI minions controls the world. It also a a great way to go stealth.

0 u/SithEmpire 05 Jun 2018 21:05

Disagree with:

  • 2 - Successive commits form a crypto chain, so if any parent anywhere back in the graph is modified then it would invalidate everything after it. At worst, this would be purely a destructive action rather than being any way to insert and propagate modifications.
  • The title - it's a blow for sure, though obviously Open Source does not back its entire existence on the integrity of one site such as GitHub.

The point about shadow-banning commiters (or indeed pull-requesters) is definitely a critical one.

0 u/roznak [OP] 05 Jun 2018 21:08

Valid points.

But now that Git has been integrated in every single Microsoft product, they may slightly modify the git so it becomes less and less distributed and more cloud central. If you make the Microsoft variant of git more useful and break the compatibility of the real Git protocol you can force developers into a strong hold.

0 u/SithEmpire 05 Jun 2018 21:23

...that point about EEE is a league more important!

0 u/aaronC 05 Jun 2018 21:20

It doesn't matter if MS owns it or not, these are all valid complaints that exist from the fact that github is centralization of the internet. It all revolves around centralizing the internet around a few large websites being an absolutely horrible idea. Tons of people love how they can go to Google, Facebook, and Reddit, and get 99% of what they need. But the end results is going to be a locked down internet with a few people controlling all the power.

0 u/AndrewBlazeIt 05 Jun 2018 21:45

How to avoid all that shit

Step 1: Don't use GitHub

Wow, THAT WAS SUPER HARD.

0 u/psimonster 06 Jun 2018 19:52

You don't understand Git very well.

0 u/Tombarr 23 Jul 2018 16:56

There's more to open source than GitHub, though I agree with the concern for centralization of open source information.