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Microsoft Is Said to Have Agreed to Acquire GitHub

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Re: Microsoft Is Said to Have Agreed to Acquire GitHub

#631

Post by azernik »

nelsonic wrote: post #123

Just when it looked like GitHub was "sustainable" through revenue ... greed for a "payout" (VCs wanting to exit the "bubble") and they sell out to the worst software Monopoly notorious for stifling software creativity through anti-competitive practices! :-( Can't GitHub just sell stock/shares to the GitHub community to secure their own independent future? I would buy a few (thousand) shares ... Who else would buy sto…

> Can't GitHub just sell stock/shares to the GitHub community to secure their own independent future?

No. Unless they want to go for an IPO, they are only allowed to sell to accredited investors (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Accredited_investor).

> greed for a "payout" (VCs wanting to exit the "bubble")

That's their job. They put hundreds of millions of dollars into GitHub 3 (Series B) or 6 (Series A) years ago, and their sustainable business relies on selling those investments for a profit.

Re: Microsoft Is Said to Have Agreed to Acquire GitHub

#632

Post by maskedSlacker »

ealloc wrote: post #558
frutiger wrote: post #498

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you ever get something for free, remember something somewhere is subsidizing it. Whether that's the other paid accounts, which therefore must be uncompetitively priced, VC funding (which will eventually run out), or your data is sold.

I use a huge amount of open-source software which I do not believe is subsidized. Some is, eg some linux/gnome devs are paid to contribute. But many smaller projects/components are volunteer-only.

It's subsidized by those volunteers' time. Time that could otherwise be spent on other things.

Granted, there's nothing nefarious about this, but there isn't anything necessarily nefarious about the fact that anything you get for free is being paid for somewhere else. Just potentially nefarious, if you don't know what's paying for it.

Re: Microsoft Is Said to Have Agreed to Acquire GitHub

#633

Post by Operyl »

chrisan wrote: post #576
gerdesj wrote: post #503

Soooo .... Linus Torvalds knocks together a code repo thingie a few years back because Bit Keeper became a bit too non free (nice one Tridge P) and calls it Git. Git is specifically designed not to need centralisation. It turns out that git is not just for Linux and can be used to manage lots of software development. A few companies spring up with some paid for value add stuff - mainly centralisation with a pretty fr…

Perhaps Linus should have knocked together all the other things GitHub created/glued together, or more importantly grown such a large community under a single roof There’s a reason MS bought GitHub and not GitLab

Because GitLab doesn’t have 5 Billion dollars? I mean, you act as if there’s a singular reason here.

Re: Microsoft Is Said to Have Agreed to Acquire GitHub

#634

Post by tomxor »

jrs95 wrote: post #570
013a wrote: post #259

This is a completely smart purchase on Microsoft's part. I can't imagine more synergy between two companies: - Microsoft has always been the largest developer advocate of any of the major tech players (Google has been a great contender for this position since 2010). - Microsoft has moved most of their open source projects to Github. - Microsoft is a major contributor to Git, including massive infrastructure projects…

I had forgotten about the Atom and VS Code angle of this. I wonder if MS will deprecate Atom in favor of VS Code now...

They can't "depreciate" an OSS project just because it's hosted on a platform they own. Atom will live on one way or another, and it was never exactly tied at the hip with GitHub anyway.

Re: Microsoft Is Said to Have Agreed to Acquire GitHub

#635

Post by maskedSlacker »

flatline wrote: post #571
EnderMB wrote: post #117

I spent eight years building software on .NET, so I have a lot of time for Microsoft, but I fully understand why a lot of people aren't happy with this news. It's been good to have a leader in open-source that is unaffiliated with anyone but the tech they chose to use (Ruby/Rails). For me, it doesn't matter who takes it over - it's just sad to see a neutral player disappear. With all that said, things have changed a…

I also spent years working with Microsoft’s proprietary technologies. The reality of Embrace, Extend, Extinguish was still alive and well as late as 2011 when I mostly stopped dealing with them. Since that time they have definitely taken a new direction, with increasing adoption of Linux in particular, but I have trouble belieiving the corporate DNA has been so thoroughly overwritten in the last few years that this d…

Tossing out Ballmer has greatly improved things, but it's hard still hard to ever trust them.

Maybe when Ballmer is dead and buried.

Re: Microsoft Is Said to Have Agreed to Acquire GitHub

#638

Post by stormbrew »

EnderMB wrote: post #117

I spent eight years building software on .NET, so I have a lot of time for Microsoft, but I fully understand why a lot of people aren't happy with this news. It's been good to have a leader in open-source that is unaffiliated with anyone but the tech they chose to use (Ruby/Rails). For me, it doesn't matter who takes it over - it's just sad to see a neutral player disappear. With all that said, things have changed a…

> For that reason, I can't see Microsoft doing a "Skype" and merging GitHub into their platforms.

Maybe not now, but what about after the next reorganization or the next CEO? If it's no longer in MS' interests to keep a relationship with this audience somewhere down the road, why would they leave them alone?

This is the uncertainty people are afraid of.

Re: Microsoft Is Said to Have Agreed to Acquire GitHub

#639

Post by jakevn »

shmerl wrote: post #357
youseecomrade wrote: post #305

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the network effect is too great to ignore. I would guess the number of potential contributors you get just by using GitHub, where many people have an account and know the workflow/UI, is bigger than any other place. 5 years from now when GitLab is acquired by Google we'll have to migrate again.

At least Gitlab can be forked in case of disaster. You can't do it for Github.

Which Gitlab? The software is less important than the ecosystem. Git is the major component, but Github/Gitlab are about usefully centralizing it. Gitlab is still a centralized service, even if there are N instances of centralization.

In other words, I don't know how much use it is to fork Gitlab if the community around it is dispersed. Git is already based around decentralization, and I don't see how running my own instance of Gitlab makes it any less disruptive when the most popular instance of Gitlab is disbanded.

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