The ghost of the skype acquisition would make me panic.
They can stop updating the Github web interface and put all development efforts on a new Github for Windows Store UWP app.
Microsoft and GitHub have held acquisition talks
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Re: Microsoft and GitHub have held acquisition talks
#152Are people here really reasoning like "C# / .Net and VSCode are really great SO Microsoft acquiring GitHub would surely end well". What is the connection between SOME of their newer dev tools being good (oh, just try the mess that is Visual Studio) and... well, anything else.
You believe that these well-liked tools/initiatives were random anomalies, born independently from and untouched by Microsoft's leadership?
Re: Microsoft and GitHub have held acquisition talks
#153Aren't dev tools are going cloud. MS might have just bought a bunch of servers with nasty dependencies on Jenkins in the hopes it results in more deployments to Azure.
Re: Microsoft and GitHub have held acquisition talks
#154I can't help but be insanely sceptical. Microsoft has a massive legacy of Embrace, Extend, Extinguish and I don't want the GitHub ecosystem to suffer from the same reoccurring pattern. Call me jaded by Microsoft's past behaviour, but I just cannot forget the numerous times Microsoft has absolutely ruined thriving ecosystems by using the same tricks.
Microsoft wouldn't benefit from killing GitHub.
Heck Microsoft killed their own competitor TFS and pushed people to migrate to Git, and uses GitHub themselves for hosting several products. Microsoft also has full Git support in Visual Studio Online (their enterprise competitor to GitHub), Visual Studio, and VS Code.
Microsoft would likely use GitHub to advertise their development products, tools, and services like Azure. I doubt they'd want to "extinguish" GitHub because it just means less eyes on their adverts.
Re: Microsoft and GitHub have held acquisition talks
#155Earlier 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.
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 co…
> I think the Microsoft of today is very different from the Microsoft of the nineties.
If they've managed to change that much, then nothing prevents them to make the opposite turn and return to the monopolistic Microsoft as soon as a new CEO steps in.
That's why I prefer Microsoft to stay away from the products and projects everybody loves. Furthermore, I don't think Microsoft has anything to contribute to GitHub.
Re: Microsoft and GitHub have held acquisition talks
#156Don't really agree with most comments trashing this hypothetical deal, bringing up the Skype precedent.
Its been what, 2 years since the Linked-in and Xamarin acquisitions? Nothing seems to have changed. Microsoft just seems to know that the desktop is no longer the cash cow that it used to be, office still is but may not last long, so its a good idea to diversify its portfolio.
Satya is not Ballmer.
Re: Microsoft and GitHub have held acquisition talks
#157Seems 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.
The fact that the Microsoft of the past 2 years is "getting better" at something they've tried to do for many decades is a great reason to be worried about them taking ownership of a product they are unfamiliar with.
e.g. "GitHub is really starting to improve again" - Devs in 2050
Re: Microsoft and GitHub have held acquisition talks
#158Earlier 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.
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Re: Microsoft and GitHub have held acquisition talks
#159I'm mostly indifferent, but would like point out that MS has managed their dev products decently well. (At least the ones I use)
Re: Microsoft and GitHub have held acquisition talks
#160HOT TAKE: The things that drove Skype to change from the Golden Age Of Skype were largely market-driven things like the rise of the smartphone that killed pretty much every other popular communications platform at the time (AIM is dead now, too) and there is no evidence that an independent Skype would have weathered the market shift any better than a Microsoft-owned Skype did.