Why would they limit themselves to the features of integrating multiple external sites when they can build the features, integration, velocity and product direction they want without being beholden to external stake holders with different values and motivations.
GitHub's effectively the home of OSS development, with great UX and design aesthetics, they definitely don't need to delegate for help in building out their own product.
The only stake holders who would benefit by redirecting to external sites, are the external providers themselves as it would end up with a worse UX and fragmented and limited experience, which is exactly what you don't when wanting to attract sponsorship, it should be as easy, seamless and integrated as possible.
Microsoft have two choices with the direction of GitHub:
Use it as a loss-leader to get developer mindshare and get more people to use what they actually get a profit from, Azure and others.
Or, they can use GitHub to build a open platform for the entire ecosystem.
What of these two options are the best for users of the platform? I'm sure one option is better for the shareholders of Microsoft/GitHub, but I'm more interested in the value for the users, many who are open source developers.
Of course, they don't have to collaborate with the rest of the ecosystem. But if they were truly interested in making the open source ecosystem better, without any compromises, they would have built something different than what was launched today.
> The only stake holders who would benefit by redirecting to external sites, are the external providers themselves
Sure, if you think of it as OpenCollective vs GitHub. But in the end, open source developers are the ones who should be benefiting from whatever choice they make (that's my naive hope at least). And the choice they made was to improve short-term mindshare, in front of long-term open source sustainability.
For me, GitHub have become an essential open source infrastructure project. But, the platform itself is nowhere near open, and every new feature they seem to be launching, is closed-source and _aims_ to fracture the existing ecosystems the feature touches.
> Use it as a loss-leader to get developer mindshare
Right, that's why they paid 7.5B to acquire GitHub and are further investing in it to be more appealing to developers and gain even more mind share.
> Or, they can use GitHub to build a open platform for the entire ecosystem.
Is that code for not shipping developer focused features they've released since acquiring GitHub? Most of the features like free private repos and package repositories have been well received.
> What of these two options are the best for users of the platform?
For users, definitely all the features they're taking advantage of now that didn't exist before.
> Sure, if you think of it as OpenCollective vs GitHub.
I'm purely viewing it from the developer's perspective on what would attract more funding/sponsorship, which is by far the more convenient and integrated solution for all reasons already mentioned in my previous comments above.
I view this as a massive potential that could spur on a whole new wave of sustainable OSS development similar to what YouTube/Twitch are doing for content creators. This was never a consideration of GitHub before but with this announcement it's now become a strategic focus which I hope will be continually improved on over time.
GitHub's effectively the home of OSS development, with great UX and design aesthetics, they definitely don't need to delegate for help in building out their own product.
The only stake holders who would benefit by redirecting to external sites, are the external providers themselves as it would end up with a worse UX and fragmented and limited experience, which is exactly what you don't when wanting to attract sponsorship, it should be as easy, seamless and integrated as possible.