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Submitted via IRC for SoyCow1984
If you’re a GitHub user, but you don’t pay, this is a good week. Historically, GitHub always offered free accounts but the caveat was that your code had to be public. To get private repositories, you had to pay. Starting tomorrow, that limitation is gone. Free GitHub users now get unlimited private projects with up to three collaborators.
The amount of collaborators is really the only limitation here and there’s no change to how the service handles public repositories, which can still have unlimited collaborators.
This feels like a sign of goodwill on behalf of Microsoft, which closed its acquisition of GitHub last October, with former Xamarin CEO Nat Friedman taking over as GitHub’s CEO. Some developers were rather nervous about the acquisition (though it feels like most have come to terms with it). It’s also a fair guess to assume that GitHub’s model for monetizing the service is a bit different from Microsoft’s. Microsoft doesn’t need to try to get money from small teams — that’s not where the bulk of its revenue comes from. Instead, the company is mostly interested in getting large enterprises to use the service.
Source: https://techcrunch.com/2019/01/07/github-free-users-now-get-unlimited-private-repositories/
(Score: 2) by darkfeline on Wednesday January 09 2019, @07:36PM (3 children)
Read the terms of service, GitHub/Microsoft don't own your code. If companies weren't afraid of violating copyright on software, they wouldn't be using clean room techniques when developing software to avoid to possibility of copyright infringement (rumors about Uber notwithstanding).
Join the SDF Public Access UNIX System today!
(Score: 2) by Thexalon on Wednesday January 09 2019, @08:09PM (1 child)
I know they don't own your code, but they sure as heck can read it, and even if they don't violate copyright by simply taking your code and compiling it, they can violate any trade secrets locked up in that code and as long as they keep the fact that they used your algorithms secret from you they can get away with it scot-free.
That' why I advocate setting up your own git repo if you're doing anything important: It's not hard, and will probably do a better job of protecting your code.
The only thing that stops a bad guy with a compiler is a good guy with a compiler.
(Score: 2) by darkfeline on Friday January 11 2019, @02:07AM
I doubt Microsoft would want the risk of reading their customers' code. If there's even the suspicion that Microsoft stole some code, all they have to do is go to discovery and "Whoops, in the logs here say employee X looked at these guy's code". That's not going to look good in court (and "losing" the logs doesn't look good in court either). They don't even need to prove that the code is copied, the plaintiff can just claim MS's code is "heavily inspired" by their code.
That's why clean room techniques exists. You cannot allow your devs to even glance at any potentially similar code without raising questions about copyright ownership.
Join the SDF Public Access UNIX System today!
(Score: 2) by stretch611 on Wednesday January 09 2019, @08:19PM
Let's assume that you make something really really good.
Microsoft steals it.
Who is going to win, the lawyers you can afford or the lawyers Microsoft can afford?
Now with 5 covid vaccine shots/boosters altering my DNA :P