[Toybox] Alternatives to github?

Tue Jun 5 12:18:25 PDT 2018

Even if off topic, please do post again when you get the context behind
Microsoft's acquisitions going sour. I would love to read it.

Until then, I need to migrate my own stuff to GitLab.

GH

On Tue, Jun 5, 2018 at 1:12 PM, Rob Landley <rob at landley.net> wrote:

> On 06/05/2018 05:34 AM, Reverend Homer wrote:> On 05/06/18 08:34, Rob
> Landley wrote:
> >> On 06/04/2018 01:04 AM, Reverend Homer wrote:
> >>> gitlab? cgit @ landley.net?
> >>
> >> Maybe gitlab.
> >
> > I take it back. Gitlab is hosted at Microsoft Azure.
>
> Eh, hosted isn't the same as owned by.
>
> Running on commodity linux containers in the azure cloud probably isn't
> noticeably worse than running on commodity rackmount whiteboxes in some
> nameless
> low-bidder data center in houston? The point of all that infrastructure is
> to be
> fungible. (I'd never trust _proprietary_ data to them because I fully
> expect
> they're snooping the contents of every container for secrets to copy. But
> if
> it's public stuff that's cryptographically verifiable? They can't do much
> worse
> than sourceforge...)
>
> "Owned by microsoft" is a problem because historically every acquisition
> microsoft's ever made involved the entire staff of the original company
> leaving
> and the technology being taken over by bureaucrats, and there's a _reason_
> for
> this that requires a lot of context to explain. More than I want to post
> on a
> technical mailing list for an unrelated project.
>
> Properly explaining what really worries me about the github acquisition
> requires
> understanding a business framework I wrote about long ago based on chapter
> 12 of
> the book "Accidental Empries" mixed with bits of the mythical man-month
> and the
> innovator's dilemma. It was the most popular series I ever wrote at The
> Motley
> Fool and I saved a link to an australian author reviewing my article
> series for
> a german magazine:
>
>   http://landley.net/writing/#3waves
>
> In 2016 I gave a talk at the Flourish conference on that with updated
> material
> and so on, and they never posted the video they recorded. I has a sad about
> that, I wasn't jetlagged or anything!
>
> Sigh. Looks like the most recent attempt I did to update the explanation
> was in
> 2011:
>
> https://landley.net/notes-2011.html#01-12-2011
> https://landley.net/notes-2011.html#02-12-2011
> https://landley.net/notes-2011.html#04-12-2011
> https://landley.net/notes-2011.html#05-12-2011
> https://landley.net/notes-2011.html#06-12-2011
>
> >> <...>
> >> I could go on for quite some time (no, seriously, you want 5x this much
> >> material? Say the word.)
> >
> > I'll be glad to read! I found out a lot of interesting stuff from this
> > message.
>
> Sigh. I'm not significantly motivated by dislike of microsoft any more
> than I'm
> motivated by dislike of facebook, or perl. There was a time I monitored
> them
> closely as a relevant threat, but that was quite a while ago:
>
> https://www.fool.com/archive/portfolios/rulemaker/1998/12/
> 21/microsoft-the-overdog-rule-maker-portfolio-decem.aspx
>
> Burying you in links is easy. The phrase "astroturf" was coined to describe
> microsoft's fake PR posing as grass-roots organization (in zdnet I think?
> I dug
> up the link
> http://www.zdnet.com/zdtv/siliconspin/features/story/0,
> 3671,2103460,00.html from
> http://www.landley.net/writing/mirror/fool/todo/CashKingPort981118.htm
> but all
> archive.org has for it is archived 404 errors), but if you google for
> "microsoft
> astroturf" today you get plenty of
> http://techrights.org/2009/05/27/ghettoblaster-may-be-microsoft-astroturf/
> https://www.eetimes.com/document.asp?doc_id=1143683
> https://gigaom.com/2012/04/26/the-ethics-of-astro-turfing-
> sleazy-or-smart-business/
> https://www.prweek.com/article/1236875/pr-technique-
> astroturf---grassroots-beware-imitations-grassroots-campaigns-influence-
> legislators-popular-effective-public-affairs-people-known-fake-it
> and so on.
>
> There's even a https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Criticism_of_Microsoft
> wikipedia
> page you could read if you care that much.
>
> But that's all water under the bridge. IBM used to be evil too, the DEC
> Field
> Circus" was one of the big early opposition forces against unix... they
> don't
> matter anymore.
>
> I have a general interest in computer history and often try to put it
> together
> into a larger story:
>
> https://landley.net/notes-2010.html#17-07-2010
> https://landley.net/notes-2010.html#19-07-2010
>
> But microsoft is such one-note evil it's not really very interesting. I
> moved on
> from being annoyed about them to being about the FSF about 15 years ago.
>
> I'd much rather point you at Steven Levy's book "Hackers" and then say
> "now read
> Ken Olsen's smithosonian interview for the other half of the story" (which
> I
> mirrored at http://landley.net/history/mirror/interviews/olsen.html ), or
> point
> you at all 4 sides of the story of the invention of the 4004 (Ted Hoff the
> designer is http://landley.net/history/mirror/intel/Hoff.html Federico
> Fagin the
> layout engineer who left to found Zilog is
> http://landley.net/history/mirror/interviews/Faggin.html their manager
> Gordon
> Moore is http://landley.net/history/mirror/interviews/Moore.html and the
> japanese engineer who was their customer liason at busicom and who some
> people
> say was the real brains behind it is
> http://landley.net/history/mirror/intel/shima.html )...
>
> And I need to redo my "rise and fall of copyleft" talk (link to the mp3 of
> the
> ohio linuxfest one at the start of my outline,
> https://landley.net/talks/ohio-2013.txt but it's a bit incoherent without
> the
> video I was showing on the screen and stops suddenly when the video cable
> fell
> out in a way that makes _no_ sense audhio-only, but again they recorded
> video
> and only ever posted audio...) but that mentions how the apple vs franklin
> decision of 1983 extended copyright to cover binaries and thus invented
> proprietary software, even though back in 1980 Bill Gates had testified
> before
> congress _demanding_ the law be changed and had failed to make any
> progress, as
> he explained to a journalist who recorded the conversation and yes I have
> the
> mp3, on https://landley.net/history/mirror look for "1980 audio interview
> with
> bill gates"...
>
> Anyway... off topic here.
>
> Rob
> _______________________________________________
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