<story><title>GitHub Is Microsoft’s $7.5B Undo Button</title><url>https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-06-06/github-is-microsoft-s-7-5-billion-undo-button</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>dbingham</author><text>I don&amp;#x27;t trust self interest.&lt;p&gt;Especially not in my butcher, brewer, or baker.  Pure self interest gets you McDonalds, Bud Light, and Debi cakes.  I consume exactly none of those things and have no desire to consume any of those things.  They taste terrible, are bad for me, and the companies themselves are generally bad for their communities and the world.&lt;p&gt;A good butcher, brewer, or baker is driven by craft first - care for their product, care for their customers, and care for the environment.  They devote themselves to their craft.  Not out of self interest (&amp;quot;I&amp;#x27;ll make more money if I do it this way.&amp;quot;) but out of sheer joy of craftsmanship and doing good.&lt;p&gt;I have known few producers who&amp;#x27;s products I would rate trust worthy who weren&amp;#x27;t driven first by craftsmanship, care for their customers, and care for doing good in the world.  Self interest (of the &amp;quot;I need to make a living&amp;quot; form, not the &amp;quot;I want to be rich&amp;quot; form) in these situations is consistently a secondary interest.  For these crafts people, if they can&amp;#x27;t meet their self interest, they simply stop crafting rather than pollute their product.&lt;p&gt;That&amp;#x27;s who I trust.  Never the behemoth driven by fiduciary duty and self interest.&lt;p&gt;Adam Smith&amp;#x27;s philosophy is nearly 250 years old and predates the modern industrial revolution.  It&amp;#x27;s time we stop putting it on a pedestal.  We&amp;#x27;ve learned so much about the way people, markets, society and people in markets and society function that he simply had no way to know.</text></item><item><author>mdpopescu</author><text>&amp;gt; Microsoft doesn&amp;#x27;t care about the developers. It cares about having the dominant platform.&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest.&amp;quot; (Adam Smith.)&lt;p&gt;I don&amp;#x27;t trust benevolent people. I trust self-interest. I don&amp;#x27;t need to offer my undying allegiance to Microsoft - I can like them as long as they do things that benefit me, and dislike them when they don&amp;#x27;t.</text></item><item><author>notveryrational</author><text>Nothing where they are going to gas all the developers or something. Nope.&lt;p&gt;It&amp;#x27;s more about priorities and intentions. Microsoft doesn&amp;#x27;t care about the developers. It cares about having the dominant platform. It recognizes that its image makes that difficult.&lt;p&gt;The GitHub acquisition: Microsoft didn&amp;#x27;t suddenly get more beautiful. It put on a mask. It will kill GitHub - or at least let it flounder - if that&amp;#x27;s what&amp;#x27;s best for its business. It will push Microsoft technology into the GitHub user base if necessary.&lt;p&gt;Developer relationships aren&amp;#x27;t an end in themselves - something Microsoft wants because its good. Developers are a means to an end, and its Machiavellian in its application of corporate strategy to achieve this end.&lt;p&gt;Microsoft would happily buy Ubuntu Canonical if they thought it would win them either a market advantage or a way to push Microsoft stack into the Linux userbase.&lt;p&gt;Some people probably don&amp;#x27;t have a problem with that. I do. But maybe I&amp;#x27;ve got a chip on my shoulder from seeing this go badly so many times.</text></item><item><author>staticassertion</author><text>I kept reading, waiting for the insidious part. So what you&amp;#x27;re saying is that Microsoft has a company wide strategic vision to improve its relationship with developers?&lt;p&gt;Did you leave some part out?</text></item><item><author>notveryrational</author><text>Microsoft can not buy goodwill with me, personally. I worked at the company and was privy to &amp;quot;strategic conversations&amp;quot; whereby they were looking to regain trust with developers to get them back from Android and Google to Windows stack.&lt;p&gt;Microsoft practically forced us to use Windows stack for anything and everything, even when there were much better tools. Under Satya, it was better, but the emphasis is still very much on getting, as Steve Balmer said &amp;quot;Developers developers developers&amp;quot;.&lt;p&gt;Microsoft knows its being challenged in the platform game and that developers have migrated. But having seen the inside of Microsoft corporate, legal, compliance and policy I don&amp;#x27;t have high confidence that this isn&amp;#x27;t another PR project destined for death of the startup.&lt;p&gt;It&amp;#x27;s also a terrifying lesson about the fragility of the open source movement.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>LeifCarrotson</author><text>I&amp;#x27;ve met a large number of great craftsmen who I would rate trustworthy and who are driven first by craftsmanship and for whom self-interest is a secondary interest.&lt;p&gt;I&amp;#x27;m privileged to work at a great shop with some 20 other people for whom profit is just a small part of the goal. We call fiscal health &amp;quot;oxygen&amp;quot;: It&amp;#x27;s something we need, but if it&amp;#x27;s present it should be allowed to fade from the forefront of our minds, instead focusing on more rewarding targets.&lt;p&gt;This works great when you&amp;#x27;re working with a small number of people, and when the company is driven by and owned by a very small, close-knit group of people - ideally, you can count them on one hand.  This allows non-fiscal values to be communicated. Unfortunately, communication is difficult among large groups, and the easiest and most common means of communicating values is in dollars.&lt;p&gt;I&amp;#x27;m not sure that a $7.5B company can maintain this idealism.   &amp;quot;Behemoths&amp;quot; are going to be present whenever you have economies of scale, and post-industrial-revolution we don&amp;#x27;t have craftsmen who are butchers, we have vertically integrated behemoth butchers with million-dollar tractors growing the grain that rolls in on conveyors to feed the cows that are butchered and packaged by automated machines, so each package of beef has less hands-on time than it takes the craftsman to wrap the finished product in paper and twine.  The craftsman is going to be relegated to the edges of that industry.</text></comment>
<story><title>GitHub Is Microsoft’s $7.5B Undo Button</title><url>https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-06-06/github-is-microsoft-s-7-5-billion-undo-button</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>dbingham</author><text>I don&amp;#x27;t trust self interest.&lt;p&gt;Especially not in my butcher, brewer, or baker.  Pure self interest gets you McDonalds, Bud Light, and Debi cakes.  I consume exactly none of those things and have no desire to consume any of those things.  They taste terrible, are bad for me, and the companies themselves are generally bad for their communities and the world.&lt;p&gt;A good butcher, brewer, or baker is driven by craft first - care for their product, care for their customers, and care for the environment.  They devote themselves to their craft.  Not out of self interest (&amp;quot;I&amp;#x27;ll make more money if I do it this way.&amp;quot;) but out of sheer joy of craftsmanship and doing good.&lt;p&gt;I have known few producers who&amp;#x27;s products I would rate trust worthy who weren&amp;#x27;t driven first by craftsmanship, care for their customers, and care for doing good in the world.  Self interest (of the &amp;quot;I need to make a living&amp;quot; form, not the &amp;quot;I want to be rich&amp;quot; form) in these situations is consistently a secondary interest.  For these crafts people, if they can&amp;#x27;t meet their self interest, they simply stop crafting rather than pollute their product.&lt;p&gt;That&amp;#x27;s who I trust.  Never the behemoth driven by fiduciary duty and self interest.&lt;p&gt;Adam Smith&amp;#x27;s philosophy is nearly 250 years old and predates the modern industrial revolution.  It&amp;#x27;s time we stop putting it on a pedestal.  We&amp;#x27;ve learned so much about the way people, markets, society and people in markets and society function that he simply had no way to know.</text></item><item><author>mdpopescu</author><text>&amp;gt; Microsoft doesn&amp;#x27;t care about the developers. It cares about having the dominant platform.&lt;p&gt;&amp;quot;It is not from the benevolence of the butcher, the brewer, or the baker that we expect our dinner, but from their regard to their own interest.&amp;quot; (Adam Smith.)&lt;p&gt;I don&amp;#x27;t trust benevolent people. I trust self-interest. I don&amp;#x27;t need to offer my undying allegiance to Microsoft - I can like them as long as they do things that benefit me, and dislike them when they don&amp;#x27;t.</text></item><item><author>notveryrational</author><text>Nothing where they are going to gas all the developers or something. Nope.&lt;p&gt;It&amp;#x27;s more about priorities and intentions. Microsoft doesn&amp;#x27;t care about the developers. It cares about having the dominant platform. It recognizes that its image makes that difficult.&lt;p&gt;The GitHub acquisition: Microsoft didn&amp;#x27;t suddenly get more beautiful. It put on a mask. It will kill GitHub - or at least let it flounder - if that&amp;#x27;s what&amp;#x27;s best for its business. It will push Microsoft technology into the GitHub user base if necessary.&lt;p&gt;Developer relationships aren&amp;#x27;t an end in themselves - something Microsoft wants because its good. Developers are a means to an end, and its Machiavellian in its application of corporate strategy to achieve this end.&lt;p&gt;Microsoft would happily buy Ubuntu Canonical if they thought it would win them either a market advantage or a way to push Microsoft stack into the Linux userbase.&lt;p&gt;Some people probably don&amp;#x27;t have a problem with that. I do. But maybe I&amp;#x27;ve got a chip on my shoulder from seeing this go badly so many times.</text></item><item><author>staticassertion</author><text>I kept reading, waiting for the insidious part. So what you&amp;#x27;re saying is that Microsoft has a company wide strategic vision to improve its relationship with developers?&lt;p&gt;Did you leave some part out?</text></item><item><author>notveryrational</author><text>Microsoft can not buy goodwill with me, personally. I worked at the company and was privy to &amp;quot;strategic conversations&amp;quot; whereby they were looking to regain trust with developers to get them back from Android and Google to Windows stack.&lt;p&gt;Microsoft practically forced us to use Windows stack for anything and everything, even when there were much better tools. Under Satya, it was better, but the emphasis is still very much on getting, as Steve Balmer said &amp;quot;Developers developers developers&amp;quot;.&lt;p&gt;Microsoft knows its being challenged in the platform game and that developers have migrated. But having seen the inside of Microsoft corporate, legal, compliance and policy I don&amp;#x27;t have high confidence that this isn&amp;#x27;t another PR project destined for death of the startup.&lt;p&gt;It&amp;#x27;s also a terrifying lesson about the fragility of the open source movement.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>wildmusings</author><text>&amp;gt;&lt;i&gt;Especially not in my butcher, brewer, or baker. Pure self interest gets you McDonalds, Bud Light, and Debi cakes. I consume exactly none of those things and have no desire to consume any of those things. They taste terrible, are bad for me, and the companies themselves are generally bad for their communities and the world.&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;Whoever you do buy your food from has recognized there’s a portion of the market that values what you do and is happily selling it to you, out of their own self-interest.&lt;p&gt;I, for one, like McDonalds and sometimes prefer a Bud Light.</text></comment>