Git In Ma Belly

I hesitated to use that title, since I don't particularly care for Austin Powers, but it just seemed too appropriate not to.

The Silicon Valley business model du jour is as follows:

1. Think of something you can market as an "online service".
2. Find someone willing to invest a few million dollars in your idea.
3. Use the money to offer your service for free.
4. Hope you attract enough users that you can leverage the "value" of your service to attract more investment.
5. Repeat steps 3 & 4.
6. Hope some gigantic company buys you for a billion dollars before you run out of investor money.
7. Let the new owner worry about turning your free service into something that makes a profit.

For those who don't know what GitHub is, it is to people who make software, what YouTube is to people who make videos. Everyone who publishes code on the internet uses GitHub. There are other code-hosting services available, but using them is like opening a shop in the middle of the wilderness. For some coders, their GitHub page comprises their entire online presence. It's free to use, and displays no ads. And Microsoft has just agreed to buy them for seven and a half billion quid.

Suffice to say, there are a lot of people who aren't happy with this arrangement. Microsoft hasn't exactly done a stellar job of garnering goodwill over the years, especially when it comes to companies they've purchased (Skype, anyone?)

*sigh* I think we need some good news. I've just discovered a musician called Nina, on BandCamp. You can stream her music for free, but you have to pay if you want to download a copy to keep. I like it.

*sigh* I wonder who's going to buy BandCamp.