▲ 614 points
back
366 comments
I’ll never understand why they ruined GitHub. They had everything they needed - the one place in the world where 99% of open source projects were hosted, where all the discussions happened. A product that people were so used to that it was a no brainer when it came to hosting private repos. And they had to ruin it and give space to GitLab and other competitors. What a waste…
Because it's Microsoft. Categorically incapable of respecting their users.
What's interesting to me is how many people went like 'Oh, Satya really gets open source, this time it will be different'.
The worst part of Microsoft is whoever is running their marketing department, they just inject themselves into everything, like Windows. GitHub is different, they will 100% lose users and income if they don't learn to back the hell off of it though. Windows, well, everyone complains about Windows no matter what, so valid complaints are ignored.
With Office, well, your employer is paying for it, so you have no say in it anyway.
It's clearly the marketing dept at Microsoft swoops in and poisons all their software, who else would be doing this?
This is why I say, marketing driven development is garbage.
Not to white-knight microsoft here, but I think the problem they run into with every product is that because of their ubiquity, they rapidly reach saturation with most every specialized product they sell. You cannot grow a business if your market is saturated, even if you're the only one selling. So they have to find a way to expand their market. With specialized tools, that's done by generalizing, right? And anyone who has ever driven a screw with a swiss-army knife can tell you, generalized tools never work as well as dedicated tools. Thus, Word ultimately sucks. Windows ultimately sucks. Github ultimately sucks. They are all of them trying to be everything for everyone, because the alternative is just mumbling along, being really good at being tools, but being really bad at conveying profit to their creators.
Growth. It's a disease. Can't just work on a good product it's got to make arbitrary growth targets.
This type of behaviour seems to be endemic within Microsoft. They're like the scorpion in the Russian tale of the scorpion and the frog, seemingly a retelling of the Persian tale of the scorpion and the tortoise:
A long time ago, a scorpion came to the edge of a great river. Not being a good swimmer, it asked a nearby frog if it might get a ride across.
The frog eyed the scorpion warily. “I’ve heard of your kind. I see the stinger you hide behind your back. I wish I could help you, but I cannot risk it.”
“Why would I sting you?” the scorpion reasoned. “If you die, we would both drown.”
The frog was convinced. It let the scorpion climb atop its back, then began to swim across the great river. But when they were halfway across, the scorpion suddenly stung the frog.
As the poison spread through his body, the frog cried out, “Why did you sting me? You have killed us both!”
The scorpion replied, “I couldn’t help it. It’s my nature.”
Microsoft just can't help it that they end up destroying the goodwill they inherit when they buy a property. It is in their nature.
Product managers do not care about customers. They only care about their bonus and the line moving up.
> why they ruined GitHub
Are we living in the same world? GitHub is not ruined at all, it still works great (as in it’s completely usable), it’s still where 99% of open source projects are hosted, and it’s still a no brainer to use it for public or private repos (having used Gitlab extensively, GitHub is just so much more user friendly). There is more competition, which is good, but GitHub is still the default option for open source by a long margin
I'll never understand why anyone thought they wouldn't ruin it. It's a miracle it even exists anymore.
Everyone is just figuring out again why Microsoft was so hated in the 90’s.
Microsoft will probably try to sneak it back in later. They've done that with other intrusions.
Migrating away from Github just increased in priority.
I guess it's time to consider ditching GitHub. Everything that are purchased by Microsoft ware destined to be rotten.
Calling advertisements "product tips" as if everybody is too stupid to understand what that means.
They created an amazing technology that oftentimes is indistinguishable from magic and then use it to deliver ads and - sorry about the tangent - kill people.
This really is the quote of the century:
> The best minds of my generation are thinking about how to make people click ads
What a waste.
This is how these kinds of companies operate; push the limit until customers start complaining, then you back off a little bit. They've still advanced to that line, of course, but now the userbase can be conditioned for the next push so that "a little bit worse than before" feels normal.
> GitHub does not and does not plan to include advertisements in GitHub
They already did! https://github.com/orgs/community/discussions/65245
> Hearing feedback from the community following Manson's post and the kerfuffle it generated, Rogers said, has helped him realize that "on reflection," letting Copilot make changes to PRs written by a human without their knowledge "was the wrong judgement call."
Thankfully, they need the community feedback to realize it was wrong. It was so hard to guess it was wrong without the feedback! It's good to know these people are in charge of building Copilot.
I just saw the headline fly by yesterday and thought that this was just another dumb bug in what is the slow decline of GitHub. To find out today that this was very much intentional is even worse.
Updated to add on March 31:
Martin Woodward, VP of Developer Relations, GitHub, said in a statement: "GitHub does not and does not plan to include advertisements in GitHub. We identified a programming logic issue with a GitHub Copilot coding agent tip that surfaced in the wrong context within a pull request comment. We have removed agent tips from pull request comments moving forward."
Wow, well that is clearly a bald-faced lie.
Microsoft is seriously the worst offender in shoving AI down everyone's throats.
I'm pro-AI adoption but the way Microsoft distastefully forces Copilot into everything is how you get people to hate AI.
I’m guessing product teams are told by upper management to AI-fy every product they own. Teams are then rushed to just get something out there whether they make sense or not.
Microslop is clearly flailing. They were first movers with the OAI investment but OAI is doing fine on its own and microslop failed to capitalize on that early momentum. Now they’re resorting to increasingly desperate measures across their product portfolio to stay relevant.
Would you like Copilot to generate ads?
[Yes] [Maybe later]
> We identified a programming logic issue with a GitHub Copilot coding agent tip that surfaced in the wrong context within a pull request comment. We have removed agent tips from pull request comments moving forward.
Why does this read as they are saying it was a mistake ? Because it absolutely wasn't, and it will absolutely happen again, maybe just less obvious next time.
Remember when they wanted to charge for self hosted runners and “backed down”, let’s see how long it lasts
It’s good they walked it back, but the fact it was implemented in the first place is a signal of their thinking and inexcusable in itself.
Trust is easier to lose than to gain, and Microdoft continues to break trust.
The lack of market understanding by the person that thought this “feature” was a good idea is staggering. There was never a world where developers would think this is a good idea.
But why were they running unpaid ads for third party services? It makes no sense
"You're just a bunch of fanatic, Linux obsessed Microsoft haters living in the past. Microsoft are the good guys now."
-- ca. everyone here, during the GitHub acquisition
Microsoft, how cheap minded you have to be to understand that you don't need ads? You already had everything you need to grow without slapping ads everywhere.
You had everything great. Xbox, Windows, Office,... and somehow in a short span of time you managed to enshittify everything. Focus on you core strength. Ads is not one of them. And the combination Ads+Ai it is not either. Stop ruining great things. You had - still have - great potential to have a competitive advantage over others yet you fall for these shitty practices.
I believe, if you had the chance, you would put ads on the C# compiler too.
So, after Windows cleanup announcement nobody at Github thought "may be we should review all our copilot integrations to avoid another embarrassment for MS" ?
That shows either it was just a Windows org announcement and not a culture change at MS or it was just an empty promise to temporarily deflect mounting criticism.
Either way it is disappointment for anyone who thought it was a genuine case of introspection and change of heart at MS.
GitLab team on other hand is unyielding, they love adding their "Closes #" in MRs and don't care about people that ask to get rid of it.
How long will take GitHub to backtrack on the "Allow GitHub to use my data for AI model training" aggressive setting?
> Martin Woodward, VP of Developer Relations, GitHub, said in a statement: "GitHub does not and does not plan to include advertisements in GitHub. We identified a programming logic issue with a GitHub Copilot coding agent tip that surfaced in the wrong context within a pull request comment. We have removed agent tips from pull request comments moving forward."
What a joke. It literally went in and edited the PR description 8 minutes after the user submitted it.
That's not a tip somehow ending up in the wrong context. If it were it would have happened at submission time. At least be honest. Yuck.
I moved almost everything off of GitHub when MS bought it. Go to GitLab or CodeBerg, depending...
It's great that they backed down, but they still did it in the first place. GitHub is on borrowed time now; my own repos are insignificant, but I'll definitely look to move somewhere else this year, and I'm sure many others will too.
I'm not suprised Raycast is involved in this marketing scheme. They pollute their own product with ads where they shouldn't be. Whoever is running their marketing team needs a lesson in not pissing off your userbase.
The referenced discussion:
Copilot edited an ad into my PR
I understand "free services" eventually come to the conclusion of either charging or using ads to finance and even make money out of them.
I believe there are two caveats on it:
1. Approach: to make the experience worth it, so that ads are not very intrusive , done correctly, which, over and over and over, it is proven contrarious to the interest of the user.
2. Relevance: if you are going to put ads onto your product, make sure things are done correctly, curate if possible what will be shown (I believe Microsoft's worse fear would be to see online casinos ads onto something like GitHub, as an example).
I wonder if the PM responsible for this will be held accountable. Who should resign?
I'm guessing the answers will be predictable and disappointing.
And what about the companies that thought that advertising (sorry, suggesting) their product through this channel was a good idea?
Microsoft github.com should restore classic web compatibility for the core functions (issue tracking, etc) and be native IPv6.
Still waiting for their next attempt at charging for self hosted runners. That's going to be a pain of a migration.
I wonder what was the thought process when they green lit this feature and thought it is a good idea.
It would have been less controversial to place an ad somewhere at the top of the screen. Putting it in the Markdown feels like a very deliberate and antagonistic fuck you to everyone.
That just means they'll be more subtle once the dust settles.
I would be curious what Raycast’s reaction is. They just got caught in the crossfire or they deliberately bought ads to be placed with Copilot
The problem is that Microslop is not THINKING. What is the point of inserting ads? That just increases the spam output. Sure, Microslop may think this helps boost their revenue but many people hate ad-spam. After I started to use ublock origin, there was no way back to the unsafe ads-down-the-turtles approach anymore. Ads waste people's time and money.
First of all, I find it enraging that dimwitted AI companies decided to edit PR descriptions for anything at all.
Push push push. When your customers are livid at you take a small step back. Wait for a moment then come back at them from another angle.
I hate this philosophy. But it’s seems to be the preferred path for Microsoft.
This was a humiliation ritual!