We are moving the Roslyn code to GitHub

http://blogs.msdn.com/b/vbteam/archive/2015/01/10/we-re-moving-to-github.aspx

by taspeotis • 12 years ago

493 220 12 years ago

blogs.msdn.com

With Microsoft making moves like these for their open source projects, it seems like network effects are alive and well, and working for GitHub. Of course, it did require some change from above to get to the point where Microsoft is willing to open source this stuff in the first point.

codingthebeach• 12 years ago

http://tom.preston-werner.com/2008/10/18/how-i-turned-down-3...

scrapcode• 12 years ago

Why isn't this on the front page itself?

Permit2• 12 years ago

This post only mentions Roslyn, but the F# project will also be moved over. :)

kodablah• 12 years ago

I believe it has always been there: https://github.com/fsharp/fsharp

Permit2• 12 years ago

That's actually just a clone of the codeplex project. As mentioned in the README contributions first go (went?) through codeplex.

icehawk219• 12 years ago

HOW: This will be a simple switch – turn off CodePlex, turn on GitHub. You’ll be able to see our check-ins on GitHub that same day.

It's probably a safe bet that CodePlex's days are numbered. Which is kind of a shame. It was definitely heavily lacking but I can't help but think that some more competition in the space would be a good thing.

EarthLaunch• 12 years ago

There's plenty of competition, from Bitbucket, which is better. "Social" effects notwithstanding, of course.

statictype• 12 years ago

I like Bitbucket and have been using them for some time but their interface is slow and not as intuitive as Github's.

maaarghk• 12 years ago

What's better about Bitbucket? I've never used it, just wondering.

BillinghamJ• 12 years ago

In addition to agreeing with the other comments, Github's uptime is also far better

p0nce2• 12 years ago

My only complaint about bitbucket is that I want to see the code easily, not click through heaps of buttons to do that.

taspeotis2• 12 years ago

I think Microsoft has a much better alternative to CodePlex in Visual Studio Online [1]. It doesn't feel quite the same as GitHub/Bitbucket/CodePlex because it's missing that online community feel. But it's relatively new and has been improving quite quickly [2] and it wouldn't surprise me if they started to coalesce CodePlex into VSO.

[1] http://www.visualstudio.com/en-us/products/what-is-visual-st...

[2] http://www.visualstudio.com/news/2014-dec-17-vso

sixothree• 12 years ago

I definitely like how CodePlex has dedicated tabs for documentation, as well as discussion and issues. It seems like every repo I come across on github is often just a dump of files with very little in the way of documentation. My guess is that because CodePlex makes documentation prominent, it incentivises its use while the opposite is true for github.

josteink9• 12 years ago

Github has its own issue-management, which I quite frankly find way better than anything Codeplex has, because of how it interacts and links with the source-control commits themselves. Github also supports per-project wikis, and if people aren't using them to write documentation on Github, they wouldn't be writing documentation on Codeplex either.

The reason you see more Github repos without documentation is because writing documentation is "boring" work, and mostly bigger organizations can afford the staff to write and maintain documentation.

And most codeplex repos were Microsoft's own, where they had an interest in keeping their stuff documented. On Github anyone can (and does!) open a repo.

So missing documentation has nothing to do with Github itself as much as the users and organizations it primarely attracts.

emddudley• 12 years ago

Yes, CodePlex has a documentation tab... but a lot of projects don't have anything there. I wish it would just hide the tab if there aren't any docs.

nl• 12 years ago

One of the GitHub founders has talked about being offered a job at Microsoft out of college, and deciding to take the risk starting GitHub instead.

Must feel satisfying....

Edit: Ok, not straight out of college. No less satisfying though.

justnow123• 12 years ago

Except Tom got fired from github (well, forced resignation).

hueving5• 12 years ago

The one that was sexually harassing his employees?

bdcravens• 12 years ago

Not exactly straight out of college:

"I was still working full time at Powerset on July 1, 2008 when we learned that Powerset had just been acquired by Microsoft for around $100 million. This was interesting timing. With the acquisition, I was going to be faced with a choice sooner than I had anticipated. I could either sign on as a Microsoft employee or quit and go GitHub full time. At 29 years old..."

http://tom.preston-werner.com/2008/10/18/how-i-turned-down-3...

iamcreasy2• 12 years ago

Pretty cool!

Are all these happening because Satya Nadella is trying to steer MS in new direction?

cpayne• 12 years ago

Maybe? But I think its more just a natural evolution. Scott Hanselman has been making noise regarding open source for years [1].

I'm not saying Scott is responsible, just that many people have been suggesting it for a long long time.

I saw a job today asking for TFS skills. THAT is a dying product...

[1] http://www.hanselman.com/blog/ExampleHowToContributeAPatchTo...

pjmlp2• 12 years ago

You missed the part that TFS is much more than just source control and since TFS 2012 also supports Git.

InclinedPlane3• 12 years ago

It's a natural evolution from long standing internal pressures. There has always been a strong contingent of folks within Microsoft who have espoused the "hacker" ethos more or less. Folks who cared as much about building cool things and pushing the state of the art as for making a dollar. Folks who pushed for open standards and cooperative rather than coercive interactions with other companies, customers, the dev community, etc.

For a while those forces have struggled to have their voices heard but now they have a bit more cohesion and momentum on their side so you're seeing more of these things.

iamcreasy2• 12 years ago

I don't know the inner working, but why couldn't they modify codeplex for their need? Why embrace github? or git?

To me, it doesn't feel like a natural evolution at all, in fact it feels more like a sign that MS is embracing the open source community. So they can focus their energy on what's important, developing their software and maintaining good connection with the developer community.

bcantrill• 12 years ago

This is getting terrifyingly close to my prediction that Microsoft should/would/will buy GitHub. When I first started predicting this two or so years ago, it was mainly for its comedic value (it always got laughs, followed by "yeah, they should!" followed by nervous laughter followed by "wait, do you think they would actually do that?!"), but after the open sourcing of .NET I honestly think anything is possible. Especially because the counter to MSFT buying GitHub was always "but... CodePlex!", and here they are explicitly moving a high-profile project from CodePlex to GitHub. Scary!

deanclatworthy• 12 years ago

It'd be a smart buy for a large software company, hedging their bets on moving into open source. I don't think it's out of the realms of possibility either.

weego• 12 years ago

It would be a horrible buy for any polarising brand. Microsoft is about as marmite as you get in software (along with Oracle perhaps) regardless of their recent attitude to being open. We have to be past the point where anyone with purchasibg power believes you can aquire credibility.

SwellJoe• 12 years ago

They'd have to bid against Google, by this logic, since Go also moved to Github recently.

tankenmate• 12 years ago

Sorry I didn't mean to vote you down, my baby daughter hit my hand while I was holding the mouse. I can't seem to find a way change my vote; is there one?

tdicola• 12 years ago

What does MS gain? Is online source code storage really going to be a million or billion dollar business for them? It seems like it's just a race to the bottom with costs, just like Dropbox, Box, etc. etc.

pjmlp2• 12 years ago

Hipster value. All the cool kids are now using Github.

InclinedPlane3• 12 years ago

pjmlp has it right, but I'll add some further clarifications.

One of the most important aspects of Microsoft's success is network effect. People use Windows and Office because other people use Windows and Office.

But network effect also works on the development/platform side. Devs write apps in the technologies they know and are comfortable with, and those tend to be the technologies they've used for personal or work projects. Today, far fewer of the top tier (even the top 50% really) of developers are using Microsoft technologies, or are even familiar with them. The "cool kids" code in Ruby or Python or Scala or Golang, or mobile specific languages. If they want to get things done to pay the bills they might fall back on java or PHP. But the idea of using C#, .NET, or coding Windows Apps? Far fewer devs under 30 are doing that than they were 10 or 20 years ago.

With fewer devs coding on your platform that means there will be fewer apps, especially the most desired ones, and eventually that will impact the user base as well and weaken the entire business. The era where nobody cares whether a computer runs windows is on the horizon today, even though it may be many years away. If you look at the big apps and systems from the last 5 years you see that a lot of them are either web based or mobile (specifically android/iOS as well).

Microsoft used to understand this and it was a major reason why they invested in Visual Studio for all those years when it was unprofitable. But they've had a period of unrivaled market dominance which has only recently been challenged, so they lost their way for a while.

Catering to devs is how you maintain market relevancy with your platform, which is something Microsoft desperately needs.

Additionally, improving the relationship with the dev community and attracting more devs to your platform makes hiring easier (especially hiring talented folks). It's almost impossible to objectively quantify the benefit of that but it's an enormous factor. Microsoft has been bleeding talent for years and has been starved of a lot of talent for a long time because they were perceived as being old and boring and requiring a completely different set of proficiencies to work there. If Microsoft wanted to they could turn that around and start paving a road back to relevancy in the dev community again.

rbanffy2• 12 years ago

What does MS gain?

Image.

Microsoft's message has been it's a one-stop-shop for your IT needs, as opposed to the general open-source ecosystem where everything has a different vendor (if at all). This, and the difficulty of moving to other platforms/vendors/tools was the core of its vendor lock-in power. In the 80's and most of the 90's, I went full Microsoft, from runtime to database to developer tools, because everything worked so well together.

Microsoft has been changing, of course, but if not even Microsoft uses Microsoft products, why should companies use them?

With this, again, we see the tacit admission a product or service built on top of free software is somehow better than the technologies Microsoft sells.

higherpurpose• 12 years ago

Microsoft does lots of money-losing acquires. Think Skype. They'll recover their money in 20 years (unless they account the contracts they're getting from the government for giving them Skype access as amortization).

cmdrfred2• 12 years ago

"My father taught me many things here — he taught me in this room. He taught me — keep your friends close but your enemies closer." - Michael Corleone

brudgers4• 12 years ago

I've been listening my way through the archive of Scott Hanselman's hanselminutes podcasts. Microsoft has been striving to be on the right side of history in regard to open source for five or six years. It's all out in the open.

Moving to Github is simply developer friendly.

Don't misunderstand me. Microsoft's products compete with open source software in the marketplace for developer mindshare and I am not suggesting that this is not a business decision. Being on Github helps the company iterate quickly rather than on the multiyear cycles that were standard when software came in a box.

Will Microsoft buy Github?

Only if Github is selling.

And there was value for Microsoft. There isn't amazing technology, there. There's a huge liability for litigation hosting just anyone's content that comes with Microsoft size pockets, and Git, being distributed would allow an angry community to set up their own Son of Github if Microsoft took control and acted improperly.

Incidentally, WiX has been on SourceForge since 2006. There's been nary a rumor of a deal there.

grandalf• 12 years ago

It's great to see MS making smart choices!

finenad• 12 years ago

Even though Microsoft have embraced open source, they are not happy about the GPL license, and have actively replaced GPL code in their previous takeovers.

a3n• 12 years ago

"Only if Github is selling."

Everyone is selling, for the right number of billions.

"We are excited about this new stage, because we are better positioned to ..."

jenscow3• 12 years ago

It's all out in the open.

Really? So they release the source to a few of their developer frameworks and tools, and they're now "all open"?

Don't get me wrong, as a long time C# developer I do appreciate the gesture and I'm especially happy that they're working their "not invented here" mentality, but with simply providing us with the source code that we already have anyway (via ilspy), all of this just seems over-inflated to me.

Let me compile Visual Studio, and I'll be their biggest cheerleader; or IIS, IE... and I'll promise to stop dressing as one.

On buying Github, though? That could be the final 'E' of their strategy.

Joeboy• 12 years ago

Microsoft or otherwise, I don't think the idea that GitHub is going to be run like a public utility forever is a smart bet.

davidgerard3• 12 years ago

It's reasonably easy to pick up your repo and leave.

How easy is it to pick up your bugs and leave?

pistle• 12 years ago

Private repos cost and there is, and will be, a sufficient demand for such a purpose. Between nuget for package mgmt and github (instead of TFS, etc) you are looking at having important, common pieces available. This makes it extremely comfortable to be in the MS dev camp and still feel that you can interface with others and be sharpening the sword in ways that enable you to build cross platform and potentially jump platforms as necessary.

People have seen experienced .net devs picking up in a wide assortment of communities. Some interpret this as mind flight, or it might just be that the .net ecosystem has made some wise choices that enable devs raised in the ecosystem to not feel their world has silo walls. It's less "no, this" and more "yes, and."

CmonDev3• 12 years ago

That would be great! Next time don't use one provider "cuz' everyone is on GH, dood". Bitbucket is pretty awesome too.

josephcooney• 12 years ago

I don't think MS buying github is such a scary thing. There are a few ex-MSFT-ies working at Github (Phil Haack, Paul Betts), and a few other people from the wider MS community there. I guess that is inevitable when Github has 250-ish staff.

kalleboo• 12 years ago

Also after them buying HockeyApp it wouldn't be the least bit surprising.

jrs235• 12 years ago

Wait wait wait! Why would Microsoft, or any company, increase the value of a company before buying it (thus increasing the amount they have to payout to existing shareholders)? Wouldn't you think Microsoft or some other company would buy first, then make the company worth more? For example, let's say Chevy is [seriously] thinking about buying [BatteryCompany]. Would Chevy put in an order for millions of dollars worth of batteries and then buy, requiring Chevy to pay more to existing shareholders? Or would Chevy try buying the company then placing the orders to its subsidiary?

mschwaig• 12 years ago

I think this is more like Chevy stopping to produce all the parts on their own and instead starting to use trusted parts provided by third parties which the rest of the industry already agrees on using. Buying the manufacturer of one such part really makes less sense if your company follows a completely different production philosophy.

exadeci• 12 years ago

Google is moving code to github too !! :)

ck2• 12 years ago

I had to double take and check if it was April 1st already.

XzetaU8• 12 years ago

Embrace.

zodiakzz• 12 years ago

Except hey can't possibly "Extend" a SaaS product on their own.

blumkvist• 12 years ago

I don't think you understand how this methodology works.

CmonDev3• 12 years ago

"We’ll be using GitHub Issues for both discussions and bugs after the switch"

Hilarious! Did someone call GitHub "social"?

terrajobst2• 12 years ago

Not sure I understand? I would say that GitHub is quite social. It's pretty much the Facebook of code hosting.

CmonDev3• 12 years ago

No way to hold discussions though. How social is that? How do I ask a question (which is not a bug or a feature request)? Go to some completely different site?

davidgerard3• 12 years ago

as well as switching to use git internally

LINUS INFILTRATES

farresito2• 12 years ago

What were they previously using before the switch to git? Mercurial?

Watabou2• 12 years ago

git != Github.

Github just hosts git repositories. You can use git and not host on Github.

They were using git, but hosting the repository on CodePlex.

thesimon• 12 years ago

We are moving our code to GitHub as well as switching to use git internally

But they were using a different tool internally.

farresito2• 12 years ago

They were not using git. It clearly says in the text that they are switching to git internally, as well.

terrajobst2• 12 years ago

The teams that still use centralized version control, such as Windows and Office, are either using Team Foundation Version Control (TFVC) or Source Depot (an internal tool that was built using a source code license of Perforce).

The developer division (DevDiv) currently mostly uses TFVC. For the open source projects this doesn't make a lot of sense though, which is why most these are moving to git.

Of course, we're a big company so you'll also find Mercurial and SVN, especially in MSR. I really hope that you don't find SourceSafe anymore though :-)

waitingkuo• 12 years ago

That's interesting!!! So what's Microsoft's next step? Aquire Github?

jng• 12 years ago

Microsoft embracing open source and open culture without having a clear path forward ensuring business. This reminds me of Sun a lot. That didn't end up well.

chii2• 12 years ago

sun's business model was..eerr, sparc workstations? microsoft's business model is windows and enterprise sales, with a hint of consumer sales and electronics. Microsoft has so much cash it could buy a small country.

lil_cain• 12 years ago

Sun's business model was enterprise software (openDS, SunOne, java, Solaris) which was still pretty big, and hardware, which they were very good at. They also had a cloud, and I'm sure lots of other things.

And I'm sure when things started going wrong SUN had plenty of money too. Money buys you time. It doesn't buy you survival.

benbristow• 12 years ago

BitBucket for private stuff/stuff I don't want showcasing. GitHub for open-source.

Works perfectly fine for me and since they're both Git based there's no extra learning curves for either of them.

pmelendez6• 12 years ago

BitBucket for private stuff/stuff I don't want showcasing. GitHub for open-source.

I use them in the same way, but I can't help but feeling that I am taking advantage of Bitbucket and not giving anything in return, regardless of being good guy Bitbucket.

trentmb• 12 years ago

Get a monthly subscription. They limit you by number of team size, not number of repos.

ddbennett• 12 years ago

If you like Bitbucket don't feel bad about using it. We like seeing real developers benefit from our efforts -- it's a refreshing break from playing cat and mouse with the bad actors trying to ruin it for everyone.

josteink9• 12 years ago

I definitely hope they will blog more about the migration and source-code conversion and how they did it, much like ESR blogged about the Emacs BZR to Git conversion[1].

It would probably be very interesting for customers thinking about migrating from TFS to Git themselves.

[1] http://esr.ibiblio.org/?p=5634

XorNot• 12 years ago

Makes sense to me. I've not met anyone who doesn't think Visual Studio is solid software, and received numerous recommendations that an IDE is definitely something worth paying for. MS looking to be developer friendly can only be good for them.

niutech• 12 years ago

Every monopoly is bad. GitHub is becoming one. I don't think it's a good move, as well as Google abandoning Google Code.

munificent• 12 years ago

There's always BitBucket. The transition cost for moving from GitHub to a competitor is quite low and given how deeply socially oriented the GitHub user base is, if GitHub starts turning people off, the community can and will move very quickly. Look how fast Friendster and then MySpace died.

scott_karana• 12 years ago

Can you migrate current and past Github Issues to Bitbucket? Because if you can't, that could be a big deal for many projects.

bpicolo• 12 years ago

Github is less of a monopoly from the perspective of people using it for enterprise. Open source, sure.

amadeusw• 12 years ago

That's what I thought until I read Peter Thiel's "Zero to One" where he makes an interesting argument that a monopoly allows a company to innovate, and patent system helps innovative monopolies to exist. I wouldn't extend Thiel's argument into other fields than computer science, though cough telephone carriers cough cable tv

tzs• 12 years ago

Are there any major public repository hosting services that provide good organizational tools for multiple repositories?

GitHub, as far as I have been able to determine, only supports a flat list sorted by last update.

This is annoying when a developer has a lot of repositories. I'll come across something useful in one of my areas of interest from a given developer, and then want to look at their other repositories to see if they have anything else in that area of interest. In a sane design, all of their repositories in that area would be organized under a folder, and this would be easy.

BitBucket seems to have the same limitation.

perlgeek• 12 years ago

Gitlab at least has groups of repositories, which provide some amount of namespacing. No idea if it supports nesting.

sytse5• 12 years ago

GitLab B.V. CEO here, GitLab indeed supports groups. This enables the folder structure you seek where you can find repo's that belong to the same functional group.

aggronn• 12 years ago

I think the idea is that you should have grouped projects broken out into organizations?

iamdanfox• 12 years ago

Atlassian Stash [1] allows one level of hierarchy: the top level is a list of projects, each containing multiple repositories.

It's more of an enterprise solution though, so BitBucket is probably more comparable.

1: https://www.atlassian.com/software/stash

antaviana• 12 years ago

Perhaps Microsoft wants to divest out of the git+online tools space? Github is the incumbent that they did not crack how to beat and it will be a bit more crowded with Amazon who seems to be also coming this year with CodeCommit. So far, Amazon strategy has been to suck all air from the room.

ethomson2• 12 years ago

Absolutely not. We are very committed to the git space, both on the client side (Visual Studio) and the server side (Visual Studio Online and Team Foundation Server). We're continuing to invest - in fact, we're hiring for git developer positions. (Send me a message if you're interested!)

This is about open source hosting which, to be quite honest, GitHub does better, and is where users expect our open source to be.

JBiserkov• 12 years ago

Can someone please change the title to

.NET Compiler Platform ("Roslyn") is moving to GitHub

The current one makes it seem that MSDN is moving to GitHub (wouldn't that be a sight? :-)

cmdrfred2• 12 years ago

Would probably be easier to search at least.

aurelien• 12 years ago

Always fun to see Microsoft moving to free software.

edpichler2• 12 years ago

Microsoft has being doing good decisions lately. They are becoming more open, also integrating more with industry leaders. Another good strategic decision they made was the partnership with Dropbox (https://blog.dropbox.com/2014/11/dropbox-microsoft-office-pa...) not mattering if they already have a similar service (OneDrive).

To me, these are signals of a good administration. This company is changing to keep growing, and I believe it is working. It's not the same Microsoft we knew a decade ago.

chrisdone• 12 years ago

Call me cynical, but the first thing that springs to mind with these kind of opening up is the sign of a company no longer with the bullying power to not care about being open. Rather than these changes occurring because a hierarchy of managers had a change of heart (look guys, they learned that open source is good!), a market share drop from 97% to 20% makes you humbled and reconsider your strategy, and products that don't yield returns are just sitting there and might as well be open sourced because it fosters good will in your company. IBM had to do it. Microsoft are doing it. Apple won't be doing it now that they're the big boys in town. Compare their Swift language which will remain proprietary for as long as Apple can get away with it, just as Microsoft has always done.

jordanpg• 12 years ago

Agreed.

This avalanche of pro-community news out of MS since Nadella took over is about MS rebranding itself, particularly with younger people who (incorrectly or otherwise) believe that MS technologies are "greying". They can no longer take their market dominance for granted. I think it's probably too late and doubt whether they can change the perception of MS as an overall closed ecosystem.

edpichler2• 12 years ago

Totally agreed! My comment was about the decisions they made lately due to the power they are losing last years. It's better late than never.

stevenspins• 12 years ago

Finally, you are moving it into GitHub that wil surely give yo more users for the Roslyn code

We are moving the Roslyn code to GitHub

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