[Toybox] Alternatives to github?

[Rob Landley]

On 06/04/2018 01:04 AM, Reverend Homer wrote:
> gitlab? cgit @ landley.net?

Maybe gitlab. Maybe cgit if I can get dreamhost to install it in my container at
all cleanly. (It's what kernel.org uses. I can also make puppy eyes at the
kernel.org guys and try to get my account there back...)

Hosting a git repo isn't a huge deal, it's just annoying sysadmin stuff like
mailing lists archives. :)

(Heck, I could put the repo at a URL on my website _now_. I did so last night
for a bit to check. But I want it web browseable, not just cloneable/pullable...)

> Why do you think you couldn't just keep the code at github though?

In the short term I could, just like I could write windows code and use
facebook, but I don't want to?

In the long term, I suspect that any company losing its original business model
is unlikely to be a good steward of things it acquires while searching for a new
one:

https://gizmodo.com/5910223/how-yahoo-killed-flickr-and-lost-the-internet

http://fortune.com/2015/01/10/15-years-later-lessons-from-the-failed-aol-time-warner-merger/

Microsoft specifically has a terrible track record here based on structural
problems with its culture:

https://web.archive.org/web/19991013145536/http://pbs.org:80/cringely/pulpit/pulpit19990826.html

That article analyzed its acquisition of hotmail, but that was by no means an
isolated case. Microsoft spent a huge chunk of their monopoly revenues on
acquisitions over the years and they _never_ got people, just technology:

http://landley.net/history/mirror/ms/yrcatalog.shtml

I'm aware they got a new CEO 4 years ago, but I don't trust a complete
transformation of their corporate culture to have happened in that time period
after 40 years of being evil.

Microsoft was _built_ on not understanding things like github,
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_Letter_to_Hobbyists was in 1976.

The 1995 antitrust settlement was over stealing stacker's technology and the
"cpu tax" licensing:

https://www.nytimes.com/1995/06/17/business/appeals-court-reinstates-microsoft-antitrust-settlement.html

The 1998 antitrust settlement where they said the could "bundle a ham sandwich",
was over a bunch of stuff (violating the 1995 consent decree for one thing,
using monopoly leverage to put Novell out of business was another although it
was originally on the server side, see
http://articles.latimes.com/1996-08-21/business/fi-36294_1_internet-explorer and
http://www.landley.net/history/mirror/ms/differences_nt.html), and the there was
some fascinating play-by-play coverage in Fortune magazine by Joseph Nocera
that's mostly fallen off the web but _wow_ they were slimy:
http://archive.fortune.com/magazines/fortune/fortune_archive/1998/10/26/249998/index.htm

There was strong-arming OEMs not to allow other operating systems to show up in
the bootloader even when they were installedon the hardware (this damaged OS/2
on IBM's own hardware, and put BeOS out of business):
https://www.theregister.co.uk/2002/02/20/be_inc_sues_microsoft/

Here's an article I wrote almost 20 years ago now back when I was doing stock
market investment columns about accounting games they played:
https://www.fool.com/archive/portfolios/rulemaker/2000/02/17/why-microsofts-stock-options-scare-me.aspx

(Microsoft's investor relations department called my editor and insisted that it
wasn't "income" it was "cash inflow". They were furious but couldn't argue with
what I'd said on a factual level. A couple years later they caved and changed
their policy to award stock instead of options, although in between was the
dot-com bust.)

Who can forget "windows refund day": http://marc.merlins.org/linux/refundday/
which was related to the "cpu tax" (per-motherboard licensing preventing vendors
from selling hardware without windows, if you sold _one_ system without windows
the cost of your every copy of windows you sold doubled because you could only
get the cheapest price with an absolute blanket license including it on every
single machine, and yes this prevented IBM from selling OS/2 on its own Aptivas
when Windows 95 came out because microsoft wouldn't let them license Windows 95
at ALL unless it was on every machine including the ones they wanted to put OS/2
on
http://www.nwitimes.com/uncategorized/ibm-introduces-aptiva-computer-without-much-publicized/article_9dbae4b8-b6f4-5ad4-9369-574ddfeb4df7.html)
and microsoft's perrenial campaign to equate "bare machines" (ones with no OS
preinstalled) with piracy because clearly there was no use for them BUT to
install a pirated copy of windows (gutting other operating systems was just an
innocent side effect, sure). And yes they're still pushing this same marketing
line and having journalists fall for it:

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-microsoft-emergingmarkets/naked-pcs-lay-bare-microsofts-emerging-markets-problem-idUSKBN0GA0V120140812

Oh, microsoft capturing the 32 bit transition was about
http://catb.org/esr/writings/world-domination/world-domination-201.html and
https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/larryosterman/2005/02/02/farewell-to-one-of-the-great-ones/
and took microsoft itself by surprise (hence the rapid decoupling from OS/2 and
switch to pushing windows).

I followed the "minimsft" blog for years, which is still there but no longer
updates, all sorts of things I could go into there.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mini-Microsoft

But even back in the early days, Bill Gates screwed over the founder of Digital
Research on the IBM deal (scheduled the appointment with IBM in the morning as
far as IBM was concerned and in the afternoon as far as Kildall was concerned so
when the IBM guys showed up Allen wasn't home, this bought him time to buy QDOS
from Tim Patterson and put in a competing bid for the OS contract, and of
_course_ qdos was a cheap clone of CP/M the same way windows was a cheap clone
of the mac, which apple had given xerox several hundred million for and of
course ms gave them nothing because they never do, the weren't called "the black
window" for nothing).

Gates conspired with Ballmer to screw over his co-founder Paul Allen when Allen
got Hodgkins Lymphoma in 1983 (the story is the reason Paul Allen didn't come
_back_ is he heard Gates and Ballmer talking in the next room about how they
could reclaim his stock if he died rather than it going to his family)...

Yes, I'm aware Gates retired in 2008 and Ballmer retired in February 2014:

https://www.zdnet.com/article/ballmer-i-may-have-called-linux-a-cancer-but-now-i-love-it/

But did microsoft _stop_ being a multi-billion dollar patent troll demanding
billions for technologies they didn't invent and couldn't commercialize?

https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/2014/10/lawsuit-reveals-samsung-paid-microsoft-1-billion-a-year-for-android-patents/

They've been patent trolling for a long time, and yes a lot was specifically
against Linux:

http://www.theregister.co.uk/2004/11/19/microsoft_wto_winning_without_firing/

You may remember Nathan Myrvhold, one of the Microsoft executives burned out in
the 1998 antitrust trial (and there were a lot,
http://www.landley.net/writing/mirror/fool/todo/rulemaker991223.htm), who went
out to found one of the largest patent trolling operations, which is still at
it:
https://psmag.com/magazine/a-patent-boogieman-with-the-potential-to-obliterate-aspiring-startups

I could go on for quite some time (no, seriously, you want 5x this much
material? Say the word.) But the point I'm trying to make is everything they did
for 40 years was slimy and incompetent. Heck, Gates was only considered for the
IBM contract in the first place because of family connections (he was "Mary's
Boy", his mother was on the board of directors of the Red Cross with either
IBM's Chairman or CEO, I'd have to dig up my copy of "big blues" to find the
page to see which one; he's William H Gates the Third, he comes from old money,
remember he dropped out of Harvard to start msft, and watch Triumph of the
Nerds, which is on youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sX5g0kidk3Y to see
how he screwed over Paul Allen on initial stock position _and_ screwed over Mits
simultaneously working a salaried position with them and competing with them).
His success was _entirely_ about monopoly leverage (starting by leveraging
IBM's, then leveraging microsoft's own) and negotiating exclusive distribution
contracts to tie up supply channels and exclude competitors.

This is a company that made its fortune with business practices I abhored and
spent most of my career opposing in various ways, consistently pushing inferior
technology at the expense of superior technology (seriously, saying that "NT is
a unix" http://sunsite.uakom.sk/sunworldonline/swol-10-1996/swol-10-gates.html
and "NT will defeat Unix"
http://www.itprotoday.com/windows-8/bill-gates-windows-nt-will-dominate-over-unix
two months apart?)

That company is now saying "oh I'm retired and living off my ill-gotten gains,
now instead of chasing you off your own territory and replacing your work with
an inferior clone I'm just going to buy the land out from under you and then let
you share my land because I'm just that generous..."

Sigh. Microsoft's own internal strategy memo for defeating and ending open
source was where "embrace and extend" came from
(http://www.catb.org/esr/halloween/halloween1.html ). They're embracing git, I
expect them to come up with proprietary extensions in about 6 months.

My enthusiasm for using a microsoft-owned github is beyond measure. It cannot be
detected with modern scientific instruments. I know where the #*(%&# bodies are
buried and they smell.

Rob