On Sun, Jul 25, 2021 at 07:43:10PM +0100, Brian wrote: > On Sun 25 Jul 2021 at 09:34:42 +0200, tomas@tuxteam.de wrote: > > > On Sat, Jul 24, 2021 at 04:27:23PM -0400, Jim Popovitch wrote: > > > > > Why isn't this on Salsa instead of a Microsoft site? > > > > ...you're right. I won't touch github unless I'm forced to :-( > > I went to > > https://github.com/alexpevzner/sane-airscan > > and found it full of very useful information. You will explain why > Microsoft's involvement in the site should make me wary of advising > users to go there? It is subtle, and you might disagree. I always wondered why github was worth 7.5 billion to Microsoft [1]. Surely it seemed a bit steep for "just" generating good will in the "open source" (as they choose to call it) community? Of course, github succeeded in one thing: they managed to centralise git, which is inherently decentral. Many people these days see github as a synonym to git and can't bother to use git without github's shiny web interface. This was, even before the acquisition, enough reason for me to keep as much distance as possible between github and myself. But still, 7.5B? Now, with github copilot [2], things start making sense: github users get support from an AI (GPT-3) for which Microsoft has an exclusive license (only the service is available for mere mortals). They now have a strategic position on how code is written "out there", at least, they hope to have it. Personally, I very much dislike the situation. It very much reminds me of "The Evitable Conflict" [3] from Isaac Asimov, with the little wart that Microsoft isn't bound by the Three Laws of Robotics, but just by their shareholder value :-) Cheers [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Github#Acquisition_by_Microsoft [2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GitHub_Copilot [3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Evitable_Conflict - t
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