[sylpheed:37044] Re: Github or not Github, this is the question

[Steve O'Hara-Smith]

On Fri, 22 Oct 2021 07:09:35 -0400
k0 at trixtar.org wrote:

> On Thu, 21 Oct 2021 15:58:18 +0100
> "1.anonimo.italiano at gmail.com" <1.anonimo.italiano at gmail.com> wrote:
> 
> > M$ never had stopped the war against 
> > the Open Source Universe.
> ...
> > - I will not continue to follow the project, 
> > nor continue to use Sylpheed if it goes under r
> > M$ umbrella. Period.
> 
> Seconded, out of hand

	This is a bizarre and misinformed attitude.

	Sure Microsoft is a money grabbing enterprise with no morals like
nearly every multi-national company, but they aren't at war with open
source they just want to ensure that it doesn't interfere with the holy
task of increasing their share value. They pretty much don't care about
Linux on the desktop, what browser you use or whether Lotus runs these days
because that's no longer important to them.

	Oh and they're not going to release their code as open source
because they don't want to be laughed at.

	They bought github so they could sell licenses to companies to use
it for commercial development either on github itself or on a licensed
internal installation - it makes them a lot of money. They let open source
developers use it free because that's good advertising (everybody knows
about it). Gitlab uses the same model as do many "enterprise level" service
providers.

	I see no reason not to take advantage of this other than the
presence of a better option or personal preference. It would of course be
unwise to allow github to hold the only copy of the work, but git doesn't
work like that anyway.

	Personally I wouldn't give Microsoft a penny[1], but that wouldn't
stop me from accepting stuff they give away in the misguided hope that I'll
buy something or recommend anyone else to do so.

[1] One[2] action I object to has nothing to do with open source. They
clawed their way from being a successful software company, one among many,
to their current dominance[3] by a simple, but unethical, strategy. When a
copy of Windows cost around 200 in the shops they told manufacturers that
they could have it for 5 provided they installed it on *every* machine they
sold. So that suddenly instead of getting a box and shopping for an OS so
that you could use it you got one for free - why would you bother spending
money to try something else.
[2] I wasn't much impressed by their BASIC - not after hearing "We've done
it, got a 16K BASIC in 4K of ROM" (Newbrain project) and seeing a simple
program that extended a string at both ends run perfectly for several
minutes and then pause for *two hours* of garbage collection before
carrying on - this on a 4K Level 1 TRS-80.
[3] Their isn't much left of the Microsoft that did any of that in
operation, they're all enjoying their fortunes.

-- 
Steve O'Hara-Smith <steve at sohara.org>