Microsoft, today:
Microsoft Corp. on Monday announced it has reached an agreement to acquire GitHub, the world’s leading software development platform where more than 28 million developers learn, share and collaborate to create the future. Together, the two companies will empower developers to achieve more at every stage of the development lifecycle, accelerate enterprise use of GitHub, and bring Microsoft’s developer tools and services to new audiences.
Yours truly, 3 years ago when Google’s Google Code code hosting service shut down:
This is your continued reminder that Google, and start-ups funded by VC money, are not a safe place to store your work. Own your shit before GitHub starts inserting malware into downloads or sells out in some original and disruptive way. Get a domain, some shared hosting, maybe a Linux or BSD VPS if you’re rich. With git it is easy enough to move a project if you have cloned the project locally and have established a web presence that people can check for updates. At the very least, don’t make the GitHub page the public-facing home for your project.
This kind of bullshit is why ioquake3.org exists and is the front-door for that project. Github has some great collaboration tools in their web front-end, and I’d guess there are developers out there that don’t even understand yet that there are other options for Git hosting.
It’s a burden that hosting is expensive, but these kinds of sell-outs happen all the time, that’s why you have to give your project a real homepage and not rely on a third-party that doesn’t have a sustainable business model.
I don’t know yet if we’re going to move ioquake3’s code off of Github, but at least people will still be able to find the project if we decide to do so.
