Easy to say that right now, but Microsoft hasn't owned it long enough to have any negative impact on the service. For all we know 5 years from now they'll pull a Sourceforge and start bundling malware into your downloads.
I know there's an awful lot of legacy hatred for Microsoft around HN, and I'm not claiming they'll never be a bad actor in any regard ever again -- but I'd expect if that happens for it to be a lot more subtle than "hey, let's make desperate deals with sleazy third-party companies to stuff shady crap in your downloads until we're inevitably caught at it."
Sure, it was just a convenient comparison to something that's already happened with what was effectively the previous github.
Github made it through the "We need to deliver 1000x gains for our investors" phase of their history, but all that means is they've moved into "We paid $7,500,000,000 for this, are we getting as much value as possible?"
I am cautiously optimistic about this one. Partly because of promising recent decisions from them, and partly because if there's one thing Microsoft knows how to do well, it's business software.
A few years ago I'd have told you "Surely Microsoft won't start automatically installing Candy Crush games on my licensed copy of Windows Professional" but here we are.
A few years from now, some brilliant manager realizes they can "add value for customers" by helpfully including third party software offers with github release downloads, just like Sourceforge did. Who knows?
