Microsoft Is Said to Have Agreed to Acquire GitHub • Hacker News Board

Re: Microsoft Is Said to Have Agreed to Acquire GitHub

#141

Post by ctjj » Sun, Jun 03, 2018, 8:45 PM UTC

gkya wrote: post #104

the_trapper wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm also optimistic they'll revamp GitHub's pricing structure. Their current price of $7 a month is absolutely absurd for individual developers. I can get a pretty decent VPS for $2 a month cheaper. Considering that most of their competitors give small teams free private repos, their price should be half of that. I understand that they have a lot of open source projects to subsidize and all, but I highly doubt a lot…

I don't understand why a solo dev needs to host his private repos somewhere. You can just keep it on your machine, and have it backed up with the rest of your data. And given git is distributed, you should be able to work with teams w/o requiring Github.

I can only speak for myself, but I like hosting private repos on GitHub because I like using issues & milestones to track my progress

Re: Microsoft Is Said to Have Agreed to Acquire GitHub

#142

Post by sverige » Sun, Jun 03, 2018, 8:45 PM UTC

timvdalen wrote: post #93

This may just be paranoia but if I were competing with Microsoft on something that I'd have private code for hosted on GitHub, I'd be pretty worried right now.

That's not paranoia. That is completely reasonable considering Microsoft's history.

Re: Microsoft Is Said to Have Agreed to Acquire GitHub

#143

Post by ocdtrekkie » Sun, Jun 03, 2018, 8:45 PM UTC

I don't mind this, as long as the side of Microsoft which has been on GitHub so far as the side of Microsoft who ends up dealing with GitHub in the future.

But this will definitely end the concept of GitHub as a single-source place to find code. Microsoft's competitors will likely move their code, at the least, and of course, the crowd who will never trust Microsoft will leave as well, regardless of how well they manage it.

All-in-all, I don't think that's a bad thing for anyone: Software shouldn't all come from one site, and the industry was becoming far too centralized around GitHub.

Re: Microsoft Is Said to Have Agreed to Acquire GitHub

#144

Post by ChicagoDave » Sun, Jun 03, 2018, 8:45 PM UTC

Reading through replies to this and especially about "the death of free software" makes me ask, "Was software ever free?"

From my perspective, any software that has made it to production use ended up supported by some large for-profit corporation.

JavaAnd IBM and other companies hiring developers to work on "free software".

Without the support of corporations, most software just dies.

So Github is losing money and can't figure out a model to become profitable. They could start charging for all repositories. They could go public, but then they're beholden to some small set of investment groups.

Microsoft, under Nadella, has been about as pro-open source as you can get.

The only change I expect from Microsoft re: Github is that they will very likely bake DevOps into their tools (Code/Visual Studio) and their cloud (Azure) so that developers can be more productive.

The illusion of free software has always been just that. An illusion.

Re: Microsoft Is Said to Have Agreed to Acquire GitHub

#145

Post by ec109685 » Sun, Jun 03, 2018, 8:45 PM UTC

autarch wrote: post #39

I don't understand how GitHub has been unable to become profitable. Anyone know more and want to share some details?

Plus they have very large private enterprise instances of github.

Re: Microsoft Is Said to Have Agreed to Acquire GitHub

#146

Post by flocial » Sun, Jun 03, 2018, 8:45 PM UTC

If this goes through Microsoft basically gets access to all the private proprietary code of so many companies. I would have never expected Github founders to even entertain the notion. I guess times change.

Re: Microsoft Is Said to Have Agreed to Acquire GitHub

#147

Post by nicodjimenez » Sun, Jun 03, 2018, 8:45 PM UTC

This is seriously depressing. GitHub had such massive network effects that you'd think if anyone could stay independent it would be them.

Re: Microsoft Is Said to Have Agreed to Acquire GitHub

#148

Post by the_trapper » Sun, Jun 03, 2018, 8:46 PM UTC

MightySCollins wrote: post #110

the_trapper wrote: post #81

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm also optimistic they'll revamp GitHub's pricing structure. Their current price of $7 a month is absolutely absurd for individual developers. I can get a pretty decent VPS for $2 a month cheaper. Considering that most of their competitors give small teams free private repos, their price should be half of that. I understand that they have a lot of open source projects to subsidize and all, but I highly doubt a lot…

But what if they increase the price or add more plans...

I'm hoping they go with the current VSTS pricing...

https://www.visualstudio.com/team-services/pricing/

It's very simple, reasonable, and sane compared to GitHub's.

Re: Microsoft Is Said to Have Agreed to Acquire GitHub

#149

Post by Y7ZCQtNo39 » Sun, Jun 03, 2018, 8:46 PM UTC

LeanderK wrote: post #45

I am worried that a company as important to the open-source community as github is now owned by one of the major players. I think it really impacts the neutrality of github. If I would compete with microsoft in a certain space, I would really think twice about relying on github. Also, this monopolization is driving me mad.

I could see developers ditching GitHub with the acquisition for a perceived conflict of interest. It's really easy to change your remote.

I see a potentially big market opportunity for anyone who wants to compete in the space now.

Re: Microsoft Is Said to Have Agreed to Acquire GitHub

#150

Post by sandebert » Sun, Jun 03, 2018, 8:46 PM UTC

I can imagine the people at GitLab being very excited about this! Perhaps sytse would like to comment?