Important open source projects should not use GitHub (2020)

23:59: “No one donates money to OSS”

00:00: “You must leave the world’s biggest software website to go to this random Germanic non-profit because MS was bad 20 years ago”

Are we sure "MS was bad" is the right thing to say? Are they now behaving ethically and responsibly?

If not, maybe it's very valid to be critical of our over reliance on such an actor, specially when alternatives are present.

They are a large and wealthy corporation, with a lot of proprietary software and service products. It may appear, at times, that their interests align with the interests of end users or open source contributors, but that is at best a fleeting illusion; the moment they figure out how to make more money by screwing people, that's exactly what they'll do. That's why Recall is coming back to Windows, despite a huge backlash some five minutes prior. It's why the code to Windows and Office will never be open source. It's why the SSH remote plugin for Visual Studio Code is, for some reason, a proprietary binary that MSFT refuses to build for platforms that are not economically relevant to the Azure business unit (e.g., BSD or illumos systems).

Companies/Corporations aren't good or bad, they simply don't obey to moral rules like humans, as their sole goal is making more profit and make sure it will grow with time. As they grow,this aspect becomes less and less compatible with the customers interests, that's why we see many businesses rewriting their contracts or terms and conditions in a more restrictive way and rarely the other way around. It's not about being companies being good or bad; it all depends on if and when the company need for profit will force them to walk that line after which they start to be user hostile. So, pretty much any company can be forced one day in a condition to become "evil". For that matter, I'd trust Codeberg over GitHub any day, as it has no interests in pushing me into using other services, selling my data or should they go bankrupt (hardly as they're a non profit) lying to me about that until it's too late because my data is an asset their liquidators want to cash from.

Microsoft was bad today as well. Or have we forgotten windows 11 sending screenshots?

You mean Microsoft Recall? That never sent screenshots anywhere.

How do you know? It's closed source. And they're in an "AI" race where every competitor ignores IP law and privacy.

How it worked was well documented last year.

It was taking screenshots and storing them locally - the (justified) anger about it was that anyone with physical access to your machine (eg an abusive spouse) could see what you had been doing, and it was to be turned on by default.

> was well documented

By trustable 3rd parties?

> last year

But this year it has MORE "AI" doesn't it?

> By trustable 3rd parties?

Yes, that thing was hacked to pieces by privacy researchers.

I haven't been following updates on Recall since June last year: https://simonwillison.net/tags/recall/

Oh wow never even knew that about the SSH feature, that's real scummy.

I was mad they forced me to upgrade to 11 for new WSL features, and now refuse to let you set up 11 without a Microsoft account.