On Sat, Jun 2, 2018 at 2:49 AM, David Kastrup <dak@gnu.org> wrote:

Will Godfrey <willgodfrey@musically.me.uk> writes:

> I've just read on The Register that there are discussions between
> GitHub and Microsoft, with a possible buy-out by Microsoft. I really
> can't think of a worse possibility :(

I can. A buyout by Oracle. Though Oracle tends to kill projects fast
enough not to take everyone's enthusiasm with them and so replacements
pop up. Microsoft tends to just sap all joy out and eventually people
don't know why they ever cared and are too tired to create something
new.

First of all the whole point of media is to be speculative otherwise it would be boring. I take this "news" with a grain of salt.

Both GitHub and Microsoft are companies with a board and the latter has past actions that would bar most individuals after a background check in many companies. I choose not to "trust" these guys. I do most of my open source contributions to the Apache foundation for that reason, and use their projects when I can. Their board does have open source DNA, has a great security team and good project oversight imho.

An Oracle buyout would be worse though as I see it. They seem to be more litigious at the moment. For example they have been in court for about 10 years with google over Java, trying to make API interfaces subject to copyright and patent claims. I could go on.

Robert