When Microsoft acquired GitHub, a lot of open-source GitHub users weren't happy. At least 100,000 of them were upset enough to move to a leading GitHub rival, GitLab. Now, GitLab is moving its code repositories from Microsoft Azure to Google Cloud Platform (GCP).
Andrew Newdigate, GitLab's Google Cloud Platform Migration Project Lead, explained GitLab was making the move to improve the service's performance and reliability.
Specifically, the company is making the move because it believes Kubernetes is the future. Kubernetes "makes reliability at massive scale possible." GCP was their natural choice because of this desire to run GitLab on Kubernetes. After all, Google invented Kubernetes, and GKE has the most robust and mature Kubernetes support.Kubernetes, or K8s, is a container-orchestration system which essentially automates the process of converting applications to run in their own "containers," or "jails," virtual machines which run their operating systems in isolation from the system as a whole. K8s was designed by Google, and was designed to work with Linux; Microsoft's Azure includes similar functionality, which also works with Linux, but it seems that trust is still in short supply where MSFT are concerned, if a hundred thousand former GitHub contributors have left GitHub/Azure for GitLab/K8s simply because the corporate acquisition happened.
That's not the only reason that Google is making Linux news feeds, though; GOOG has also just upped its support of Linux, and of Open Source software development, by a couple of very large steps.
Again, as reported by ZDNet:
Google couldn't exist without Linux and open-source software. While you may not think of Google as a Linux company in the same way as you do Canonical, Red Hat, or SUSE, it wouldn't be the search and advertising giant it is today without Linux. So, it makes sense that Google is moving up from its Silver membership in The Linux Foundation, to the Platinum level.
With this jump in status, Google gets a seat on the Foundation's board of directors. This position will be filled by Sarah Novotny, the head of open source strategy for Google Cloud Platform. Novotny is a self-confessed geek. She has a long history of bridging the gap between the business world and the tech world. Before coming to Google, where she also heads the Kubernetes community, she was head of developer relations at NGNIX and program chair for the O'Reilly Open Source Convention (OSCon).
Jim Zemlin, The Linux Foundation's executive director, said: "We are honored that Sarah Novotny, one of the leading figures in the open-source community, will join our board -- she will be a tremendous asset." Zemlin added, "Google is one of the biggest contributors to and supporters of open source in the world, and we are thrilled that they have decided to increase their involvement in The Linux Foundation."Apparently, GitLab's shift from Azure to GCP had been in the works for a while, and wasn't directly related to the proposed GitHub purchase, at least organizationally; Google's significantly increased role in the Linux Foundation may also have been in the works for months. It's interesting timing, though, and may make sense with Microsoft, who are already Platinum Linux Foundation members, having recently purchased a major OSS code repository in GitHub. GOOG have billions of dollars invested in Linux-based infrastructure, and zero interest in letting MSFT seize control of Linux to any significant extent.
All of which assumes, of course, that Microsoft were ever capable of seizing control over Linux via GitHub. To quote Marcel Gagné at Linux Journal:
Not to overstate it, but times have changed, and so has Microsoft. Linux is no longer a bit player; it’s the most popular and most used operating system on the planet (albeit not on the desktop), and with that kind of reach, Microsoft knows that Linux and open-source software is a fact of life in the connected and networked world. If you can’t (or won’t) support the biggest deployed ecosystem of software, you’re shutting the door on a vast sum of money.
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But let’s, just for a moment, pretend that Microsoft is in fact up to its old "extend, embrace and extinguish" tricks. Open source can and would survive anything Microsoft could throw at it. Linux withstood SCO (backed at the time by Microsoft) in a long legal battle, and all of Microsoft’s best attempts to frame it as dangerous, not up to the job, unreliable and a cancer. That was back when Linux was the little guy. In 2018, Linux is the Big Man On Campus.Whether the nascent GitHub/GitLab schism might have an effect on the OSS community as a whole, or Linux in particular, is still unknown, although Gagné doesn't think it's likely. Microsoft clearly have work to do when it comes to reaching out to the Linux community, though; the fact that their purchase of GitHub was met with suspicion, while Google's support of GitLab is framed as "commitment to Linux and open-source software," says a lot.
Microsoft are trying to reach out to the GitHub community, though:
Mark Russinovich, the technical chief of Microsoft Azure, knows developers are worried about the tech giant’s acquisition of popular coding website GitHub.
He’s heard the concerns that Microsoft will “mess with” the code repository site, or channel all developers’ work to Azure.
Not so, Russinovich said Wednesday on stage at the GeekWire Cloud Tech Summit in Bellevue.
“We’re just gonna be another cloud when it comes to GitHub,” he said. Making it harder for developers to access any other cloud would “fundamentally violate” the whole principle of GitHub, he said.
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Microsoft hopes developers will use its technologies, Russinovich said, but it will not make it harder to use any other company’s technology on GitHub.
“It’s all going to be very light touch,” Russinovich said. “We’ll be in the marketplace just like everybody else will be in the marketplace. You’re not going to see any major preferential difference or advantage given to us over anybody else.”All of which certainly makes it sound like Microsoft is turning over a new leaf, having learned some humility after the abject failure of their overbearing Windows 10 strategy. That strategy, though, is something that Redmond only abandoned a few months ago, after pushing Windows 10 for years in some profoundly anti-competitive (and anti-consumer) ways. How long it takes them to earn back the trust they squandered both during and after upgradegate... well, that remains to be seen.