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 _______________________________________________ Toybox mailing list Toybox@lists.landley.net http://lists.landley.net/listinfo.cgi/toybox-landley.net
