An explanation as to why I no longer host my personal repositories on Github. I maintain my github presence to collaborate on ZeroMQ and rsyslog, as these communities are centered here.
Github has entered into an agreement with Microsoft to be purchased. Under this agreement, "GitHub will be led by CEO Nat Friedman, an open source veteran and founder of Xamarin, who will continue to report to Microsoft Cloud + AI Group Executive Vice President Scott Guthrie".
Here are some of the things the Microsoft Cloud + AI Group are up to:
- Trying to win the JEDI contract, a 10 billion dollar contract with the Pentagon
- Won a 6 year cloud computing agreement with 17 U.S. intelligence agencies
- Wrote about their pride that Azure is mission critical to ICE
- Entered the "Predictive Policing" market, using Chicago as their case study. The Chicago PD is notoriously corrupt. The Department of Justice investigation of Chicago's police department found "a pattern or practice of unconstitutional use of force" and numerous violations of citizens Constitutional rights.
I did not become an open source software developer in order to be used to help increase the market value and image of a company making billions of dollars enabling surveillance, violence, and human rights abuses.
I will keep my github account, as we, the open source software community, have put nearly all of our eggs in this basket and I cannot collaborate and contribute to projects I work on without it. At the very least, I can stop hosting my own projects here.