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Microsoft and GitHub have held acquisition talks

businessinsider.com

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Re: Microsoft and GitHub have held acquisition talks

#341

Post by watersb »

ianwalter wrote: post #318
Joeri wrote: 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?

Apple. I know it's not Apple's style but imagine if Apple started expanding outside of it's bubble like Microsoft has. If they really went all in it would be amazing.

I use mostly Apple products, for 25 years, but I would not want Apple to own GitHub.

Microsoft has always been a developer-tools company. They are many other things besides, and I have had some nasty experiences with their sales reps (who would say anything to close a deal), but I have always felt that at its core, Microsoft is a developer-driven organization.

Apple likes developers too. They taste like chicken. And a cloud-based developer institution would let Apple destroy two populations - cloud operations and developers - with one asteroid.

Re: Microsoft and GitHub have held acquisition talks

#342

Post by ggg9990 »

derrikcurran wrote: post #299
nailer wrote: post #266

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's Steve Ballmer. He had the reverse-Midas touch, but he's gone now.

Microsoft was actually highly successful under Ballmer. Just not in terms of image or in the consumer-facing world.

They made a lot of money, but were not successful. Business software companies become irrelevant decades before their revenues go away (eg IBM). Microsoft lost its future relevance under Ballmer.

Re: Microsoft and GitHub have held acquisition talks

#343

Post by e40 »

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.

Yeah, I agree. I would immediately delete my github account if this happened. I don't buy that MS has seen the light and is a different company now. In the last 2 weeks, 3 people have told me their Windows 10 install updated itself and was completely borked. At least one of these people are going out and buying a new Windows machine as a result (thus giving MS a little more revenue). It absolutely disgusts me.

Re: Microsoft and GitHub have held acquisition talks

#344

Post by Alupis »

sker wrote: post #212
giancarlostoro wrote: post #185

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Plus I'm sure under Microsoft they will have some sort of free private repos like GitLab, Bitbucket and Visual Studio Team Services already do. Lack of free private repos is the main (only) reason why I don't use GitHub.

When did you last look at GitHub? They've had free private repos for well over a year (maybe longer).

I have ~50 private on my account... Embarrassingly bad half-completed side projects mostly.

Re: Microsoft and GitHub have held acquisition talks

#345

Post by rovr138 »

severino wrote: post #234
Rychard wrote: post #221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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: Skype

Re: Microsoft and GitHub have held acquisition talks

#347

Post by mhh__ »

ohashi wrote: post #340
p1esk wrote: post #311

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why? I've been using Skype as my main video/text chat app since ~2002. It hasn't changed much after the acquisition.

Really? It's become nearly unusable for me. I used to have it open all the time and talk to lots of people. Now it feels closer to an infection on my computer that I only pull up when I have to talk to someone on it and then promptly struggle to logout and make sure it's truly closed.

Comparison of Skype to (Say) Discord is like a different universe (Sometimes [Electron!])

Re: Microsoft and GitHub have held acquisition talks

#348

Post by Rjevski »

KyeRussell wrote: post #271
nkkollaw wrote: post #238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

They undoubtedly did a bad job, but I think that Skype has a lot going against it from external factors anyway. Everyone I know is using FaceTime or Facebook Messenger. The only time I hear Skype anymore is people using it for podcasts. Obvious anecdata but it seems reasonable that services with better device integration (FaceTime) or social graph access (Facebook) would do better in the long run.

Disagreed.

Skype used to be mainstream. It was essentially a cross platform iMessage & FaceTime, almost ahead of its time. It was also efficient in terms of network usage, being peer-to-peer for the most part.

Had it continued to be usable, it would still be mainstream and might have the place of WhatsApp today. Instead, we now have this garbage Snapchat-like UI, a server-based model that doesn't even work (it was supposed to "fix" the P2P model, but for me it's been way worse than P2P which always worked), and a shitty Electron client that melts your battery and looks awful (they killed a gorgeous - especially on Mac - native client to replace it with this shit).

Re: Microsoft and GitHub have held acquisition talks

#349

Post by mhh__ »

singingfish wrote: post #287
d0lph wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If it were maybe 5 years ago I would be horrified, but under Nadella they are a lot less ... Microsoft-y.

I was at a container orchestration conference the other day, and got the distinct impression that microsoft are not the great satan, and azure is probably a really good choice for cloud service. I can't believe I'm saying that. I'm having dinner with a prolific debian maintainer tonight, maybe he'll beat some sense into me.

They actually have to compete now, is why.

I assume

Re: Microsoft and GitHub have held acquisition talks

#350

Post by Rjevski »

ocdtrekkie wrote: post #335
nkkollaw wrote: post #238

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

I think people forget how bad Skype was in a lot of ways though. The big reason they shifted to the cloud model, for instance, was how unreliable message delivery was on phones with peer-to-peer. I remember when, in order to send images, you and the other person had to be online at the same time. They made some missteps, sure, but Skype was already a very dated solution.

I am not sure how "unreliable" the peer to peer model was. From what I remember it's always been perfect for me.

Media uploads could have been solved by a server-based "media" service, while keeping the reliable & battle-tested P2P architecture.

As of currently, the server-based architecture is an absolute disaster, way worse than P2P.

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