[Tagging] New GitHub tagging repo "osmlab/osm-tagging" - was: emergency=lifeguard

[Eugene Alvin Villar]

On Tue, Jun 19, 2018 at 6:20 AM, Paul Allen <pla16021 at gmail.com> wrote:

> On Mon, Jun 18, 2018 at 10:27 PM, Frederik Ramm <frederik at remote.org>
> wrote:
>
> Others have qualms about signing up to an American social network platform
>> just
>>
> to participate in OSM discussions (remember - if the product is free, you
>> are the
>
> product).
>
>
> From what I have read, others in the IT community have qualms about
> keeping their
> repos on github now it's been bought by Microsoft.  See, for example,
> https://www.theregister.co.uk/2018/06/04/microsoft_buys_github/ and the
> associated
> comments (almost all negative, some so vituperative they would make Linus
> Torvalds blush).
>
> It remains to be seen how many of those are willing to walk the walk as
> well as talk
> the talk.  However, I suspect a significant number have at least
> duplicated their
> repos elsewhere.  Some claimed they were going to copy their repos
> elsewhere
> and poison the copies on github to leave a nice surprise should Microsoft
> try
> to harvest their work.
>
> I'm not saying Microsoft will screw up github (although history shows
> that's what
> usually happens to their acquisitions).  I'm not saying Microsoft will
> steal people's
> work (they could do that without buying github), although I remember
> Stacker's
> Doublespace product and what happened to it.  I'm not saying Microsoft will
> embrace, extend and extinguish github, but they have a history of doing
> that.  I'm
> just pointing out that people have other reasons for avoiding github these
> days,
> and its alternatives don't have such sophisticated comments/discussion
> capability,
> so maybe that's another reason to move as much discussion as possible to
> the
> mailing list.
>

Just to comment on the Microsoft side angle here. Inasmuch as history has
been very unkind to Microsoft with respect to their treatment of open
source communities and technologies in the past (Linux, Mozilla, etc.),
there is reason to believe that they will do good with their acquisition of
GitHub moving forward and will not screw it up like the way Oracle screwed
up the Sun Microsystems acquisition. But don't take it from me, take it
from the Executive Director of the Linux Foundation himself:
https://www.linuxfoundation.org/blog/microsoft-buys-github-the-linux-foundations-reaction/

And here in OSM, the community has greatly benefited from using Microsoft's
Bing satellite imagery since 2010, and Microsoft has even recently granted
use of their Streetside imagery for use in OSM as well (no doubt to
continue countering Google). And Microsoft's Bing has been a Gold Corporate
Member of the OSM Foundation since 2017. So this doubt heaped upon
Microsoft is hopefully no longer without basis.

(But yeah, keep discussions on mailing lists as much as possible.)
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