How do you think Microsoft will change GitHub?

Question

https://www.wired.com/story/microsoft-github-code-moderation/ There are already coders moving their code over to GitLab, and there are fears they will remove code that are competing with them among other things. What do you think?

Answer 1

Fredelig maybe, but i don‘t think they could just delete code without legal consequences right now and they know that many open source devs are panicking right now, so i don‘t think they will do anything stupid or else we will see real mass migration to gitlab and similar services and github will loose a lot of value and then the shareholders will be angry

Answer 2

i don‘t think they can just remove code, that would probably be againt the current terms of use and therefore illegal. microsoft has become a great advocate of open source in the last few years. just read the statement of the linux foundation regarding microsoft buying github

Answer 3

Max Well they can modify the contract. I haven't read the GitHub policies but they might be able to delete your code. I'm not sure.

Answer 4

Max Deleting code off wouldn't be illegal. It's their platform, their hosting the code. They could delete it if they want.

Answer 5

Max I don't think they're great open source advocates. They've been caught stealing open source code and taking all the credit.

Answer 6

Ben Allen (Njinx) when a user uses such a platform they are entering a contract with the company. as long as the user is following said contract the other party has to follow it as well.
i didn‘t look at the terms of use/terms of service of github and just mentioned that i didn‘t think that they at the moment had the right to just delete based on the terms of service. this might be wrong.
but your statement that you can just legaly delete stuff if you own a platform is just wrong, since breach of contract is illegal and even if you reserve yourself the right to just delete anything you want courts might still declare your current terms of service/terms of use invalid

Answer 7

Max But who reads the terms of service? Most companies have a statement like "If you continue to use our service you agree to the terms of service"

Answer 8

Ben Allen (Njinx) assuming i have agreed and they can at the moment not delete the repo, then any change of the terms of service is a modification of the contract and as such has to be approved by both parties. but this discussion is completly irrelevant since they already have the right to delete whatever content they want by their current terms of service(i finally had the time to read them)

Answer 9

Max Let's hope that they will still protect open source. In the article they mention xbox emulators as one of the things Microsoft might have problems with. I'll check out the statement by the Linux foundation :)

Answer 10

Ben Allen (Njinx) of course they can, but they habe to present you with the choice to agree or not use github in that case, so you wouldn‘t get your code deleted without any indication, assuming that they can‘t already delete code