Invoking memories of The Empire Strikes Back when Lando Calrissian warns everyone in his city that the Empire has taken over, I awoke this morning to news that Microsoft is buying Github. Microsoft has long been the arch enemy of open source advocates like myself. But the irony in this is that I'm a happy user of Microsoft's Visual Studio Code, and am using that editor to write this post. Truth is that Microsoft is seeming to be changing for the better.

Microsoft's Windows operating system family is an egregious example of closed source operating systems and the risk to consumers from overly-controlling manufacturers. Many of us worry what Microsoft does with information collected from its customers, and chafe at the lack of control we have over our computers. But the popularity of Windows means there's lots of enticing software and a large number of folks comfortable in that environment. As they might wish for an open alternative, with a strong NO SPYWARE guarantee, they want a thing which behaves like Windows. Getting there means undertaking an effort to reverse engineer a Windows implementation in the open source world.

Microsoft's Windows operating system family seems ubiquitous today, but that wasn't always the case. Windows was introduced in the 1980's, and computers of various kind date back to the 1950's. That means a whole lot of computer history predated Windows.

The biggest concern with Microsoft's Github acquisition is whether Microsoft will do something evil with the private repositories stored on Github. Some of Microsoft's competitors use Github, and they should be concerned. Any company has to be worried about leakage of intellectual property -- with Microsoft ownership, does that risk increase?