Yup. People were angry that a company they don't like bought Github. But if you look at what Microsoft actually changed, there's not much to complain. They even made private repositories free, and significantly reduced prices for many users. It's hard to stay angry at a company when they are giving you what you want for free!
Twitter, on the other hand, wants to get users to sign up for a paid subscription and starts banning everyone who is sceptical. That's the best way to drive people away.
I doubt github has significant interest in the small org accounts. If you look at the prize differential between the „normal paid“ and the „enterprise paid“ tier, you can see where the money is. Burning the goodwill of many technical decision makers would be an issue.
The worst is yet to come, I'm staying tuned if he really bans all those mastodon accounts. It's one thing to institute a policy and then remove it again once you realize that people are not following it. It's another thing to follow through with it.
Per his previous behavior, isn't it likely that he'll modify or cancel this policy if it proves too unpopular? Perhaps he'll put it to a vote in the coming weeks.
But it's not like a rocket or a car where you can say, ok, that didn't work, so let's put it back and continue. I was really into watching the rocket boosters attempting to land a few years back, and I remember someone at SpaceX (maybe Musk?) saying that each time a booster crashed, it was just more data and another step toward success, and I thought, that's a pretty cool way to think about it.
Social media is a different thing, though. You can't just say, well, this change we made drove away journalists and celebrities, so let's put it back how it was and continue. Hard to un-kick a hornet's nest.
Yeah. His style is well suited for some problems, bad for others. It's good to have touch UI that changes all the time if you are building demo cars. It's not good if you want to build cars that you want users to use.
