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Microsoft and GitHub have held acquisition talks

businessinsider.com

231–240 of 567 posts

Re: Microsoft and GitHub have held acquisition talks

#231
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 would understand if they sold, but it would make me sad. GitHub has done a great job. I'd hate to see them have to answer to someone other than themselves.

Re: Microsoft and GitHub have held acquisition talks

#232
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.

To be fair they haven't screwed up LinkedIn. I think they will let GitHub grow with their resources.

I'd argue LinkedIn is much worse than it was pre-acquisition, but it was already on that trajectory. The "news feed" and discussions around current events, etc. They've locked down more and more of it without a $30/mo subscription. Privacy controls are a nightmare to decipher.

I think it's significantly worse albeit probably short of totally "screwed up". Just marginally worse in a lot of small ways that add up to a less useful, less efficient experience for me.

Re: Microsoft and GitHub have held acquisition talks

#233
post #200

If github had to be sold, which tech company would be a better buyer than microsoft and able to afford a $2 billion acquisition?

Possibly Amazon. They tend to leave acquired companies alone to manage how they prefer, apart from Bezos micromanaging how to cut costs and restructure logistics, which is often a good thing. Plus Amazon (like Microsoft or Google) also has economy of scale opportunities for hosting GitHub on AWS.

I do believe Amazon would interfere less with what users like about GitHub than Microsoft would.

Re: Microsoft and GitHub have held acquisition talks

#234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let's also not forget this only runs on Windows.

They've stated that they want to bring this to other platforms as well. https://github.com/Microsoft/GVFS/issues/4

Yes they want... yet it has been Windows only for a year and a half, so far. That's the problem with Microsoft buying big things like Github. It turns people not using their flagship OS into second class citizens.

Re: Microsoft and GitHub have held acquisition talks

#235
post #83

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Google buying GitHub over Microsoft would actually be arguably worse for GitHub. If Google actually bought GitHub, I would be thinking twice about using it.

Same here. I don't use Google products, other than search.

If you want to get Google search results and not give them any personal info or create a search bubble, try startpage.com or ixquick.com (same company). They have built a privacy-focused search engine that rides on Google's results. I'm not affiliated, I just enjoy using it.

If you don't trust Startpage you can try DuckDuckGo with a !g modifier, it will search Google (mostly) anonymously for you.

Re: Microsoft and GitHub have held acquisition talks

#236

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Let's also not forget this only runs on Windows.

They've stated that they want to bring this to other platforms as well. https://github.com/Microsoft/GVFS/issues/4

Their MacOS implementation that they linked to is pretty cool and understandable even for a filesystem lay-person.

https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/devops/2018/03/15/gvfs-for-...

Re: Microsoft and GitHub have held acquisition talks

#237

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 don't care if MS is getting better lately.

The fact it's getting better is obviously a positive thing, but will it stay that way in the future? no one knows.

I like the fact Github is independent of all the big players. I really, really, really hope it stays a neutral ground.

Also, if acquired by MS, I'm not that afraid for github itself. However, what is at risk in my opinion is all the integrations around github. There is a rich and striving ecosystem surrounding github. Tools like appveyor, travis-ci, coverall, readthedocs, codacy are really useful, ease a lot development and are infinitely easier to setup/maintain than a Jenkins box plus a few slaves. What would happen to this ecosystem remains to be seen.

Re: Microsoft and GitHub have held acquisition talks

#238
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.

To be fair they haven't screwed up LinkedIn. I think they will let GitHub grow with their resources.

How about Skype, though?

People loved Skype so much, it was really a feat to make people hate it.

Re: Microsoft and GitHub have held acquisition talks

#239

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.

That code you mentioned has opt-out spyware. It's not in the spirit of free software at all. It's just part of embrace, extend, extinguish.

Re: Microsoft and GitHub have held acquisition talks

#240
post #222
post #122

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I have the opposite opinion. I think every few months I see an interesting feature being added that are slowly making github a better platform. Just for the last few months we've seen a lot of improvements for Enterprise, improvement to gitHub pages, saved replies, team discussions, security alerts. I love the pace they have to release meaningful improvements.

i'm also a big fan of the atom editor

Yes, it's so snappy...
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