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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

#411

Post by giancarlostoro »

throwaway5752 wrote: post #295
notamy wrote: post #288

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most of the golang ecosystem, I think. Not to mention any other language-specific package managers that support pulling from GitHub...

And I was thinking JS/npm, not even golang.

Golang can be the biggest offender in this regard because you import by typing the URL to a github repository... Better hope someone mirrors those projects if they ever go poof. It's not even a generic import to a package[0]. Gotta be fun to have to update all those imports later if a project moves to another host to avoid Microsoft.

[0]: https://godoc.org/github.com/lib/pq

Re: Microsoft and GitHub have held acquisition talks

#412

Post by themusicgod1 »

ASalazarMX wrote: post #97

This has me wondering, what Microsoft wants GitHub for? It's not like they can't use it without owning it, and I doubt they want to improve it as it is. Probably they want control before integrating it with their products.

Because much of the free software world uses it as a coordination place - it's a weak, undefended target. If they were to buy it and quickly shut it down, the free software world would be in a tailspin for quite awhile. Microsoft could use the delay to push for legislation across the world to force developers to have a Microsoft(Linkedin/Ripple enabled) license attached to their (Microsoft) global ID. Within a year or two it could be illegal, worldwide to possess non-Microsoft licensed crypto software, then eventually all software. Especially look for software relating to the boot process/BIOS related stuff - that's another weak point right now, but there are probably others.

Re: Microsoft and GitHub have held acquisition talks

#413

Post by dannypgh »

throwaway5752 wrote: post #295
notamy wrote: post #288

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Most of the golang ecosystem, I think. Not to mention any other language-specific package managers that support pulling from GitHub...

And I was thinking JS/npm, not even golang.

It's a good thing computers are good at search and replace.

Re: Microsoft and GitHub have held acquisition talks

#415

Post by openfuture »

Aaand this is the weakness of centralizing everything in Github. Inevitable that it gets acquired by something with other motives (or is forced to exploit its central position in some way because business). The fact it may be Microsoft that seals the deal is just a cherry on top.

We need proper decentralization.

There could still be aggregators for browsing projects and bookmarking but the structural weakness of keeping all the eggs in one basket will never go away. No matter how much wishful thinking you throw at it.

Re: Microsoft and GitHub have held acquisition talks

#416

Post by sbr464 »

giancarlostoro wrote: post #185
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.

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

100% to the guy that said LinkedIn wasn’t a great product to begin with. X10

Re: Microsoft and GitHub have held acquisition talks

#418

Post by sbr464 »

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.

Who is this guy?

Re: Microsoft and GitHub have held acquisition talks

#419

Post by kankroc »

amf12 wrote: post #336
kakwa_ wrote: post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.…

> The fact it's getting better is obviously a positive thing but will it stay that way in the future? no one knows. This is such a prejudiced statement. It can be said of any company.

That's the point. No one acquires GitHub so no one can eventually corrupt it with partisan "my stuff is better than your stuff" idiocy.

GitHub works because it effectively belongs to "no one" as far as the big players are concerned. Sure they might themselves go bad one day but there is no point in hasting this for some two cents Azure/AWS/GCP mode.

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