I wonder whether this is a result of market conditions, or whether GitHub sees this is a first-to-market play of some sort, or whether it's something else. I hate to be a cynic given how much good Microsoft + GitHub have been doing lately, but what prevents this change from being rolled back?
Congrats again! I love using GitHub and look forward to many happy years shipping code on the platform.
Git is open source and widely supported, which doesn't benefit Microsoft. By causing GitHub-specific features to be an essential part of a "modern" or "industry standard" git workflow, they can capture more marketshare/attention, and cause alternatives to be sidelined. This requires removing all friction to entering the proprietary ecosystem, including purchasing. This, along with the acquisition of NPM, is the "embrace" part.
The next will be an expansion of GitHub and NPM's featuresets in ways that are only accessible via branded, first party tools (i.e. not git/ssh/yarn). GitHub has already made some inroads there prior to the Microsoft acquisition with of course the ubiquitous PRs as well as GitHub Issues and Actions. I imagine the ability to check out GitHub wikis as git repos will probably eventually go away to further this.
The last part ("extinguish") is turning off support for non-firstparty tools like git-via-ssh, .patch URL support, issue collaboration via email, yarn, et c. By the time they do this, few people will notice, having acclimated to the entirely-proprietary ecosystem they've been incrementally subjected to.
The goal, as always: a Microsoft editor (VS Code or Atom), editing code in a Microsoft language (TypeScript/.NET/whatever), signed off via Microsoft review software (GitHub mobile), publishing to a Microsoft website (GitHub/npm), running CI on a Microsoft VM (GitHub Actions), pushing code to a Microsoft datacenter (Azure).
It's simply a moat to prevent open, unfettered competition in any intersection of the vertical. Any weak spots (such as GitHub signup friction) are to be subsidized as they will yield benefits when later used as a cohesive whole in an anticompetitive fashion.
Whereas there is a need for legal corporate personhood (so they can enter contracts, be sued and sue others, etc), the extent to which a corporation has a "personality" is very much debatable— sign contracts, sure; but fund political candidates? Have a political opinion even? That's crossing a big phat red line most countries have outlawed (with good reason)— only citizens in their own name (that of a natural person) may participate in the civic life, whether board member/CEO or the lowest paid employee: same rights and duties, in a truly democratic political theory.
Factually, when psychologists attempt to describe the behavior of corporations, they are faced with "sociopathy"— but let's not pretend it's a trait, because it results more likely from the absence of consistency between people, departments, historical periods... it's not and cannot be as stable in space and time as a real natural person.
Corporations are neither good nor bad "people", they are simply not "people", but a different category of objects. We could also demonstrate conversely that natural persons and households belong to very broken categories of businesses... because they're not businesses!
So when we anthropomorphize corporations and businesses like they're people... we really create meaning out of thin air that never was there. If it's a one-man show, sure, obviously. Above that begins a very slippery slope that leads to super PACs and other churches like Evil MS versus Heavenly Apple and what-have-you.
Whatever greatness or horrors we observe from corporations should be attributed directly to the natural people who make those decisions— it's not Boeing that's bad, it's whoever's in charge and whoever condoned it. People. Boeing is just a 6-letter words, you can't put "Boeing" in jail, nor make it "Sir" by a Queen...
So I'd rather praise Nat himself than "GitHub" here, and I'd rather judge him and Satya Nadella in name than "GitHub" or "Microsoft"; recognizing that he (they) can't possibly be alone in this so the praise extends to all employees who strive to make great on a vision... and also the blame lies with them, when they're being disingenuous. People, real people, with real names and a past and loved ones and maybe kids and political opinions. Not an abstract 6-letter name who's already changed in the timeframe I wrote this post, as two new people got hired and another one left.
Indeed, a corporation is a permanent ship of Theseus: who's left, at Microsoft, from the 1990s? How much power do they command? Here is the real link between that era and now, behaviorally. The name matters little, people manning Microsoft 40 years from now will all be new people. Transmission of culture is limited between kids and parents, and even more so between one's predecessor and one's successor at a job.
Microsoft has changed, as a group of people, because well... most of these people have left and new ones came in.
Sorry for a long piece; but this truth needs saying, especially in these times if we are to reform our societies to better solve the pursue of a "greater, common good". Mistakes were made (in the legal structure of things), ethical compasses need realignment (let's just admit people from the past couple centuries couldn't get everything right nor possibly predict our present, and let's just move on with our times, our challenges, shall we?)
I'm very interested to hear what Hackers have to say about this, although I suspect it's become a fairly non-controversial, almost benign realization nowadays (used to be ridiculous, then dangerous thinking, now it seems obvious retrospectively like any real paradigm shift).
But dismissing presence of companies culture is as extreme point of view as dismissing possibility of change. To name a few - Oracle, Google, Facebook, Apple, Toyota, Tesla - they are different and quite predictable.
> If it looks like a duck, swims like a duck, and quacks like a duck, then it probably is a duck.
I am not in "Evil MS" camp but
> Fool me once, shame on you; fool me twice, shame on me
Same as with people - sometimes they change but sometimes they don't
And corporations are inherently dangerous - they maximize profit. Unbound by law, unchecked by people, even amazing people with nicest slogans would make dystopia.