Microsoft and GitHub have held acquisition talks • Hacker News Board

Re: Microsoft and GitHub have held acquisition talks

#161

Post by cesarb » Fri, Jun 01, 2018, 9:01 PM UTC

DaveMebs wrote: post #81

moeadham wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I wonder what Linus Tovalds is thinking right now. If I remember correctly, he wrote Git because Perforce was forcing him to use Microsoft software licences. https://github.com/git/git/commit/e83c5163316f89bfbde7d9ab23...

Git was developed as an OSS clone of BitKeeper (which was originally provided freely to Linux kernel developers under the agreement that they not develop a clone). https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BitKeeper

> Git was developed as an OSS clone of BitKeeper

Git was not developed as a clone of BitKeeper, it has a very different design (snapshot-based content-addressed filesystem, versus the SCCS "weave"). If anything, git was a (much faster) clone of Monotone, minus the heavy cryptography focus which made Monotone so slow.

Re: Microsoft and GitHub have held acquisition talks

#162

Post by nol13 » Fri, Jun 01, 2018, 9:02 PM UTC

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?

Well since companies are people, more like skin cells. They all get replaced every whatever days but you're still you!

Re: Microsoft and GitHub have held acquisition talks

#163

Post by amag » Fri, Jun 01, 2018, 9:03 PM UTC

danso wrote: post #147

umjames wrote: post #110

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?

> what entity at Microsoft will subvert his leadership?

I agree, it seems that both Gates and Ballmer have found new callings in life, which has left Nadella with pretty much control of the company. I remember almost feeling sorry for the guy when he took over, what freedom could he possibly have between those two? A lot, it seems in retrospect.

Re: Microsoft and GitHub have held acquisition talks

#164

Post by moistoreos » Fri, Jun 01, 2018, 9:06 PM UTC

Leave it alone! Github pricing is perfect for all incomes. They'll slap on a few features, create a tiered payment system and charge $20 for the first tier.

100% will take my code somewhere else if this acquisition goes through. Go acquire Atlassian if you want to "diversify" your portfolio. Go stick it up your Azure MS.

Re: Microsoft and GitHub have held acquisition talks

#165

Post by cptskippy » Fri, Jun 01, 2018, 9:06 PM UTC

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.

I agree and I would feel that same way if it were any other large tech company.

So many nice products have passed on in acquisition either because users abandoned them or the acquiring party did. I'm not sure which would happen first here.

If GitHub is financially strapped and looking for a buy out, I hope they're exploring other options for funding.

Re: Microsoft and GitHub have held acquisition talks

#166

Post by amag » Fri, Jun 01, 2018, 9:06 PM UTC

gsich wrote: post #150

philipov wrote: post #113

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Windows 10's forced updates and telemetry say otherwise.

Telemetry is bad, forced updates is not.

Playing the devil's advocate here, but some of the forced updates come as a result of problems found in telemetry data...

But I generally agree, I want my OS to ask me every time it wants to send a crashdump (or anything else).

Re: Microsoft and GitHub have held acquisition talks

#167

Post by ATsch » Fri, Jun 01, 2018, 9:10 PM UTC

Many people mention Microsoft's past history as reasons for worrying about this. However, I disagree. I don't think this would be bad because it's Microsoft.

I think it would be bad because GitHub wouldn't be a generally independent entity, with no business interests besides making a product good enough that people will pay for it anymore. Currently, GitHub doesn't really have any incentive to care what tools and platform you are using, or where you deploy your code. To the contrary, they want to appeal to the widest audience possible.

This would all change if owned by Microsoft. GitHubs role would then instead likely instead be to channel users into other Microsoft products and services, especially Azure. Instead of functionality that benefits everyone independent of platform, it will be in their interest to add features that only benefit users of the Microsoft ecosystem. Azure CI, deploy to Azure, .NET integration, LinkedIn integration. I don't think this is the kind of platform most FOSS projects would want to use, certainly not me.

Re: Microsoft and GitHub have held acquisition talks

#168

Post by adventured » Fri, Jun 01, 2018, 9:10 PM UTC

danso wrote: post #139

the_duke wrote: post #33

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google is notorious for killing products too, though. For me, much of the same rationale would apply

Has Google ever killed an acquisition or product of Github's scale? Most products that come to mind were niche things like iGoogle, or things that got deprecated/integrated into other products, e.g. Buzz, Wave, Picasa Google Reader is the product that seems to leave the most bitterness, but that too seems to have been relatively niche. Google killed Google Code in 2016 and moved much of their code base to Github. May…

Github is a niche product. Average people do not use it at all, its utility value is entirely niche. The average person will never know what Github is or what it does. It's useful to less than 2% of the US population, and less than 0.5% of the global population.

They've killed / destroyed / butchered large acquisitions before, yes.

Metaweb / Freebase cost them a reported $200-$300 million.

Feedburner cost them $100 million.

Slide.com cost them $228 million.

Motorola was a $12 billion disaster. They might as well have killed it.

DailyDeal cost them $114 million.

Wildfire Interactive cost them $450 million.

There are a couple dozen more in the $30m to $100m range.

Re: Microsoft and GitHub have held acquisition talks

#169

Post by skellera » Fri, Jun 01, 2018, 9:11 PM UTC

kosinus wrote: post #130

nikofeyn wrote: post #70

Earlier quoted context omitted.

what makes you think that? they killed off their own code hosting site in codeplex and moved everything to github. they are one of the largest if not the largest open source contributors in the world. and .net core is setting itself up to be a major player in cross-platform application development. it has a chance, if microsoft brings over uwp, wpf, and windows forms to .net core, to take over cross-platform gui deve…

You mention a lot of stuff that's in the same '.NET world' skellera mentioned, but the currently dominant GUI platform is the web, and neither is going to do take over. There's also still embedded software, hardware description, databases, emulators/simulators, competing virtual machines and GUI frameworks, a whole bunch of non-tech stuff, etc. They do get a lot of this stuff, but I feel like whatever they want to do…

The new Microsoft has made it clear that they want to support as many areas as they can. Azure does not have any lock-in of a specific platform (other than Azure itself in some ways) and Microsoft is constantly trying to get their tools to work in Linux and Mac. While they obviously would prefer you to be on .Net, they realize that lock-in ultimately hurts them.

Just give it a little more time. They are turning around years of company culture and they're doing a great job at it. If VS Code is a sign of future products, I'm excited to see what they come out with down the road.

Re: Microsoft and GitHub have held acquisition talks

#170

Post by SanDimasFootbal » Fri, Jun 01, 2018, 9:12 PM UTC

forgottenpass wrote: post #30

youdontknowtho wrote: post #8

That would be kind of awesome, but I don't know how the github culture would meld with a big corporation. It would be an interesting case study for other similar start ups.

Didn't github already deliberately kill their own culture a few years back with policy changes and a layer of middle management? edit: This isn't snark. Didn't they legit cut a bunch of perks, refocus everyone's priorities, and hire some people to start cracking whips? Or was I reading the public accounts of that situation wrong? Got bad scuttlebutt?

I think you are saying that they shifted from the full holocracy ambition to one with a more traditional management element because it wasn't working as well as they wanted.