Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Microsoft and GitHub have held acquisition talks

businessinsider.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

141–150 of 567 posts

Re: Microsoft and GitHub have held acquisition talks

#141

Post by beenBoutIT »

kosinus wrote: post #28
skellera wrote: post #14

Seems like the view here is pretty negative. I feel like most people here haven't worked with Microsoft dev products recently. They're getting better. I guess the crowd here isn't typically in the .NET world.

I think that's the point. I'm personally worried Microsoft may have a very narrow view of what GitHub is. A lot of tech hosted there doesn't even run on Windows, or isn't even related to software. (legal, political, docs, guides, etc.)

IIRC, internally Microsoft views GNU/Linux and GitHub as Big Satan and Little Satan, respectively.

Re: Microsoft and GitHub have held acquisition talks

#142

Post by amag »

AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote: post #85
londondev45 wrote: post #51

Microsoft has embraced Github with it's recent .Net core development, they are one of the largest contributors with some incredible cross platform dev tooling. C# is a pleasure and visual studio code is an excellent, extensible coding tool. Go forth Microsoft, the standard bashing in these communities is unjust.

I lived through the 90s, so I disagree. Anyone who feels perfectly comfortable with Microsoft's embracing of things they like is ignoring history. Maybe it's different this time, maybe it isn't.

I lived through the nineties as well, that doesn't mean I think everything that was amazing back then still is amazing today nor that everything that sucked back then still sucks today...

I think the Microsoft of today is very different from the Microsoft of the nineties.

Personally I'm not so much worried about Microsoft going back to Microsoft'95 but more about the fact that they, like most (all?) other big tech companies, collect more and more data and integrate more and more tightly into our lives. Still I feel that currently Facebook, Google and Amazon are all scarier in that respect.

Re: Microsoft and GitHub have held acquisition talks

#143

Post by TimTheTinker »

oblio wrote: post #123
TimTheTinker wrote: post #72

I haven't bashed Microsoft for a long time, and I won't any time soon. However, this development has me worried. There's a big difference between engaging the developer community with great products and purchasing important services that the developer community relies on. Microsoft has succeeded many times with products and services they've built themselves, and with products they've purchased, but how often have the…

Powerpoint was a purchase. Hotmail was another one. Frontpage, Visio, Navision, Skype, Linkedin. They’ve had quite a few which were pretty successful.

Most of those are products. Of the services you mentioned, I would only call Hotmail a success in the sense that there wasn’t a net detriment to users because of the purchase.

Re: Microsoft and GitHub have held acquisition talks

#144

Post by oblio »

falcon620 wrote: post #63

Up next: - Github user account migration/integration with outlook.com - A much-internally-championed Github/Office/LinkedIn integration effort created by some sharp but inexperieced program manager fresh just out of Washington State, that happens to require Github project descriptions to be authored in .docx format, launched as an improvement from that primitive format made by a certain mac fanboy. - An effort to mig…

For the last one: https://technet.microsoft.com/en-us/library/bb736149.aspx

And that’s from when they weren’t allowed to use BSD or Linux internally and Windows Server was rudimentary. Microsoft would have no problem migrating Github to Azure quickly.

Re: Microsoft and GitHub have held acquisition talks

#145

Post by oblio »

TimTheTinker wrote: post #143
oblio wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Powerpoint was a purchase. Hotmail was another one. Frontpage, Visio, Navision, Skype, Linkedin. They’ve had quite a few which were pretty successful.

Most of those are products. Of the services you mentioned, I would only call Hotmail a success in the sense that there wasn’t a net detriment to users because of the purchase.

Linkedin is the same. Skype kind of sucks.

Re: Microsoft and GitHub have held acquisition talks

#146

Post by pathseeker »

ManFromUranus wrote: post #90
AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote: post #85

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I lived through the 90s, so I disagree. Anyone who feels perfectly comfortable with Microsoft's embracing of things they like is ignoring history. Maybe it's different this time, maybe it isn't.

Sort of like the ship of Theseus, if all the people working at and running microsoft are different, is it even the same company?

Culture can persist despite replacing all employees over time.

Re: Microsoft and GitHub have held acquisition talks

#147

Post by danso »

umjames wrote: post #110
banachtarski wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Microsoft has been changing a lot. Embracing linux in their cloud offering, offering unix as a subsystem on Windows, open sourcing their work. Anyone who likens the current MSFT to anything resembling what it was in the 90s hasn't been paying attention to the current leadership.

That's not to say they couldn't revert to their embrace, extend, and extinguish tactics of the 90s, even under future leadership. I feel that no big corporation should own GitHub, even if their investors feel differently.

I'm not enthused about the idea of Github being bought. But on what grounds do you suspect that the Microsoft of the 90s is just lurking, like a conscious spirit, to reveal itself after a decade?

CEO Nadella started working at Microsoft in 1992, but the executives who coined and lived the EEE phrase are all out. Is Nadella a sleeper agent? If not, what entity at Microsoft will subvert his leadership?

Re: Microsoft and GitHub have held acquisition talks

#148

Post by gsich »

ttam wrote: post #87

these talks are actually not new. the same rumor appeared back in 2016 https://techcrunch.com/2016/10/07/github-is-raising-a-second... imho, github feels a bit too slow innovating, which is kinda surprising since they are still "a startup"

I hope they don't innovate that much. It seems everytime they do, the designs gets worse and worse.

Re: Microsoft and GitHub have held acquisition talks

#149

Post by gsich »

jordache wrote: post #50
AgentK20 wrote: post #6

Really hope these talks fall through and nothing comes of it. Too many bad experiences with Microsoft buying something out, mismanaging it, and it goes down the drain. As much as I love GitHub, I won't be using a Microsoft-owned GitHub for any of my company's work.

such a presumptuous statement. Why proclaim you won't use a MSFT owned github, even as a hypothetical?

And in the end, it's still going to be used.

Re: Microsoft and GitHub have held acquisition talks

#150

Post by gsich »

philipov wrote: post #113
banachtarski wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Microsoft has been changing a lot. Embracing linux in their cloud offering, offering unix as a subsystem on Windows, open sourcing their work. Anyone who likens the current MSFT to anything resembling what it was in the 90s hasn't been paying attention to the current leadership.

Windows 10's forced updates and telemetry say otherwise.

Telemetry is bad, forced updates is not.
Post reply on HN