Getting the preposition right
Topics/tags: Miscellaneous, language, short
One of the big items in the news yesterday was Microsoft’s confirmation
that they were purchasing GitHub [1]. I was surprised to hear Youngest
Son’s reaction, which I recall was something like, Yeah, Microsoft has
been making a big push into open source.
I find that amusing, given how
opposed Gates and Allen were to anyone sharing their BASIC compiler [2,3].
When Michelle texted me the news, the first
article I found was an article on The Verge
entitled Microsoft confirms it’s acquiring GitHub for $7.5
billion
[4].
Midway through the article, I found the following strange claim.
Microsoft killed its own GitHub competitor, Codeplex, in December and is now the top contributor to GitHub,
Of course they are the top contributor; they are contributing $7.5 billion.
Sarcasm aside, I found that strange. I would assume that the GitHub
employees are the top contributors to the GitHub platform. I’m not sure
who the top contributors are to Git itself. Let’s check … the GitHub
pulse says that Junio C. Hamano, aka
gitster
, a Google employee, is by far the top contributor. But I may
be misreading since that’s a read-only repository.
So it really doesn’t make sense to me that Microsoft … is now the
top contributor to GitHub
. Fortunately, they linked to another
article on The Verge. That article says
Microsoft is now the top organization with the most open source contributors on Github [sic].
Ah, that makes sense. They aren’t the top contributor to GitHub; they are the top contributor on GitHub.
You’d think they could get the preposition right.
Postscript: For some reason, Grammarly suggests that I should should
You’d think they could get the proposition right.
[1] I wonder how our alums who work at GitHub feel knowing that they will soon by Microsoft employees.
[2] Or was it an interpreter?
[3] I wonder if they gave any royalties to Kemeny and Kurtz for inventing BASIC? Probably not.
[4] I really hope that our alums who work at GitHub get a piece of that.
Version 1.0 of 2018-06-05.