GitHub users move to GitLab... which now runs on Google's Cloud.Also, Google is doubling down on Linux, in general.

Contributors unhappy with Microsoft's support of ICE weren't the only ones upset about Redmond's purchase of GitHub; 100,000 of them have apparently already decamped to GitLab, a leading GitHub rival. And that's not all they're doing, according to ZDNet:

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.

GitHub contributors threaten boycott over ICE

Microsoft's relationship with ICE just became even more of a problem for Redmond.

More than five dozen Github contributors on Thursday signed a letter threatening to abandon the website unless Microsoft canceled its Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) contract.

Microsoft, which acquired GitHub, the internet’s largest source code repository, for $7.5 billion earlier this month, is one of several tech companies facing heat for its work on behalf of ICE as a result of the Trump administration policy of separating families at the U.S. border.

Members of the GitHub community are now demanding Microsoft end its relationship with ICE or, they say, “we will simply take our projects elsewhere.”

“As members of the open source community and free software movement who embrace values of freedom, liberty, openness, sharing, mutual aid, and general human kindness, we are horrified by and strongly object to the Trump administration’s policies of detainment, denaturalization, deportation, and family separation as carried out by ICE,” the authors wrote.

GitHub is all about the open source code that contributors keep there, so an en masse flight to other platforms would essentially destroy the entire value of Microsoft's $7.5 billion purchase, making this no small threat. Microsoft haven't responded yet, but With their own employees applying pressure from inside, too, it's unclear how long Satya Nadella will continue to stick to the corporate line on this one.

Fuller coverage, including the full text of the GitHub contributors' letter, at Gizmodo.