Microsoft’s GitHub

Accessing a project on GitHub this morning, Microsoft reminded me that they own the platform.

It was very, very important to be reminded about some security stuff that I optionally could configure instead of showing me the content that I asked for. Very important.

This mirrors the interface experience that I see from the Windows Operating system. An E-Mail (that could be filtered) or a notification (that could be disabled) in the Web-interface would not have gotten in my way and would leave the decision up to me.

But as usual in windows, you have to put all my attention to this detail, that somebody else decided to be important right now. Thanks for that. This is already a behaviour from Windows that I do not approve of.

Originally GitHub was good at not getting in the way, but that changed IMHO coincidentally with the purchasing by Microsoft.

The second strike was that forced two factor authentication for my little hobby repositories there. Someone deemed that I was obviously contributing code (no shit, Sherlock) and that suddenly required a force double authentication. No opt out.

This kind of paternalism does not sit well with me. I rather would like to take my hat and leave, but given the current importance of GitHub when it comes to sharing code and linking to it, this is rather difficult.

I think I will therefore reduce the interaction with that platform and mirror stuff from GitLab there, if I really have to have a project there.