Since Microsoft owns Github, Gitlab is Corp owned now since 2022, why are so many who preach privacy or using Linux, etc, still using a MS product?
Genuine questions. I’m assumming either familiarity & simplicity with GH or difficulty migrating elsewhere?
Github has been otherwise fairly alright under Microsoft until recently.
I feel like it’s been going downhill since 2019, given the point in time Microsoft acquired them was in 2018 I’d say people have just not wanted to acknowledge the trajectory. (That included me.)
Every big feature since 2019 has been enterprise slop, in my opinion:
In 2019 they announced dependabot. What’s wrong with it?
It’s not configurable, rather than allowing a universal mechanism so people can feed dependencies into it via some custom tool that e.g. generates a standardized listing, it only supports the popular package managers. This is exactly what big enterprise wants since they only care about their super old codebases and what those use, not any upcoming stack.
In 2019, they also announced security advisories. What’s wrong with it?
That Github to this day in 2026, hasn’t bothered to add the most basic feature that regular FOSS projects would need to handle security reports, which is confidential issues. Instead, the assumption seems to be you’re either a big enterprise that already has some dedicated security team with their own email infrastructure, or Microsoft doesn’t care about you.
In 2020, they announced Github’s Codespaces. What’s wrong with it?
It makes the UI more complicated and as far as I know leaves buttons for it everywhere that can’t be turned off even if you don’t want it. And it’s a vendor lock-in feature that’s expensive, the average small FOSS project will neither have the budget to use it nor likely care to do so.
Then of course the entire AI slop spin since 2025 ish.
There’s probably more, but those are the big ones that I’ve noticed that made me suspicious of where this was going.
You’re not wrong.
But … it’s also been convenient and largely free for most use cases and has had a better feature set then most alternates without having to host your own.
If you could host your own Gitlab was the choice.
The reliability issues of late is what is making most people actually contemplate moving.
You’re the first I’ve ever heard say this. (Or read in this case)
I’ve just been freeing up my phone and life from all major data siphons. Social media has been gone for years, but then news about LinkedIn getting way worse with data (which it’s already sucked) and sharing now with Amazon, is just BS so I’ve closed it.
One REALLY annoying thing I’ve personally noticed and can’t confirm but feel it; all the companies with jobs postings basically collect all these applicants data without ever hiring. It’s another dataset that can be monetized, so now companies can make money off everyone without much effort. Through some efforts I’ve read online as all as gone through myself, we all know there job market sucks-especially tech, but I guess I never considered why there are so so many posted jobs still until now.
Fuck them all!!