This utilitarian point of view quickly crumbles once it stops naïvely looking at profit-driven organisations as anything but what they actually are: money-making machines. The first and foremost goal is the money, not the software, certainly not the end this POV claims the means maximise for. It is not a possibility, it is a certainty, especially given that $MSFT is a publicly-traded organisations with legally financial obligations to its shareholders.
Framing actual long-term sustainble practices and policies as "ideological purity" is misleading at best and a textbook example of a strawman at worst.
Parent fully acknowledges this. If anything, bringing up "but Github makes money!" is a strawman, as the risks associated with this was already aknowledged. Why is the Free and Open Source community so alergic to anything making money? We all understand that Github and Microsoft are companies that exist to make money. Pointing that out is the "I am very intelligent" https://knowyourmeme.com/memes/we-should-improve-society-som...
This whole article explains how, for the authors worldview, using Github is the long-term sustainable practice for their software.
I don't think the issue is the "makes money", but the "need to make more money", which happen to increase over time. At some point, they start making money with your code, or your users..
Who knows what ideas are growing behind Microsoft walls to make more money of gihub users? See what happened with sourceforge as an example..
Using M$ bandwidth and storage isn't the same as giving them control over the project though. It's git. You can migrate elsewhere as and when the rug pull happens. Issue tracking might be slightly harder to migrate, but even that might offer an option to clear the backlog and only bring along the really important stuff.
Not really... Github offers bug-tracker and CI as well as "pages", user management, various automation APIs, Web access, of course... Also, integrations! Want to publish your documentation to readthedocs dot com? -- You need integration with that site! Some really shady languages also now want you to use GitHub Actions to publish packages "to ensure authenticity" (there was a thread on yc just a week or so ago). GitHub can also serve as a built releases repository.
Github tries very hard to make sure users don't migrate elsewhere.
By supporting GitHub (through hosting your code in it) the way it is right now, you will be helping MS to train their editor enhancing features. Bug-testing the free tier of their paid services...
I'm not sure the deal is worth it. I'm much more pro divorcing the private interest from the public good. I'd rather my taxes paid for free software hosting.
P.S.: I'm strongly on the same page with you. Corporations are present to make money, and they always try to differentiate them with closed secret sauce, which is very incompatible with Free and Open Source Software.
Framing actual long-term sustainble practices and policies as "ideological purity" is misleading at best and a textbook example of a strawman at worst.