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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

#641

Post by fierro »

closeparen wrote: post #371
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…

This dovetails nicely with Windows Subsystem for Linux, VS Code, and Microsoft’s ongoing play to capture the Silicon Valley hipster development ecosystem that Apple is alienating.

Can you elaborate on what the Silicon Valley "hipster development ecosystem" is?

Re: Microsoft Is Said to Have Agreed to Acquire GitHub

#642

Post by textmode »

Any plans to make backups/archives before Microsoft takes over? There is an enormous volume of useful open source code from individual authors on Github. A pleasing respite from the world of team-developed commercial software. It is difficult to imagine Github could remain the number distribution channel for individual authors of non-commercial code when it is run under the auspices of a large, proprietary enterprise and consumer software company.

Since its inception, I have been using simple tcp/http clients and text-only browsers to download and browse source code from stable Github urls, as I did throughout the 90's with Freshmeat, Sourceforge, etc. To its credit, Github has always been very accessible.

What are the chances this kind of accessibilty will continue to be possible if Github is being administered by Microsoft. Direct downloads of small, source code files, many with no licensing restrictions, no sign-ups, no web browser required, no hassle... Microsoft has never managed anything like that. Microsoft has always done the opposite. Indirect downloads of large collections of binaries, often coupled with installers, licensing restrictions, usually requiring some sign-up or click-through agreement, and today, possibly with telemetry.

I hope I am wrong to be concerned about this takeover. Will Github continue to be the respository service of choice amongst authors of free source code? Perhaps some will pull out and move their code elsewhere.

Re: Microsoft Is Said to Have Agreed to Acquire GitHub

#643

Post by manigandham »

guitarbill wrote: post #577
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…

This "synergy" seems to be pretty one-sided. Which of these synergies is useful for existing GitHub users? That's kind of the problem with this acquisition, which is why few Github users are excited for it. It also doesn't feel like Microsoft understands developers or even end users consistently. VSCode is a nice editor, but not the only one. The MSDN docs and site is awful. Azure is okay, but Windows 10 is somehow m…

You answered it yourself. Github gets money to stay alive, and resources and leadership to actually start building again.

Re: Microsoft Is Said to Have Agreed to Acquire GitHub

#644

Post by jkells »

Perhaps an unpopular opinion around here but I see nothing but positives in this announcement.

This move towards a "good" Microsoft has been going on for a decade, ASP.NET MVC was released as Open Source in 2009. Seeing where they're going with .NET core, VSCode and TypeScript makes me pretty confident they will be good stewards of the site.

Microsoft had their own open source hosting solution Codeplex but closed it and migrated all their stuff to GitHub so they could be where the community was. That was a bold move and I think demonstrates how they see the community now. This isn't the Microsoft of the 90's.

GitHub is great but it's not profitable and I'm sure there are lots of improvements they could make with a bit of a cash injection.

On the flip side if Microsoft stuff it up or there is an exodus from Microsoft because people hate Microsoft, that's not such a bad thing either.

There are great alternatives out there, it's not the same landscape as when GitHub launched, everyone's learnt from GitHub, GitHub's biggest feature is the network effect. Everyone has an account and it's super low friction to contribute there. If we can break that a bit and everyone has an account at 2 or 3 places I think we might see some great innovation as competitors try to differentiate themselves.

Finally on that point. Bitbucket is awesome, you can build apps that are integrated directly into the UI https://developer.atlassian.com/cloud/bitbucket/

Re: Microsoft Is Said to Have Agreed to Acquire GitHub

#645

Post by randop »

As for me, I also dislike Github being owned by Microsoft. Big conflict of interest. Microsoft core business is closed-source software.

But, it's not wrong to give Microsoft a chance to cultivate Github. Yes, Microsoft have a long track record of being disproportion with open source products. This is also true with other companies.

Good thing to point out is, there are alternatives.

Re: Microsoft Is Said to Have Agreed to Acquire GitHub

#646

Post by Zvolkov »

fierro wrote: post #641
closeparen wrote: post #371

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This dovetails nicely with Windows Subsystem for Linux, VS Code, and Microsoft’s ongoing play to capture the Silicon Valley hipster development ecosystem that Apple is alienating.

Can you elaborate on what the Silicon Valley "hipster development ecosystem" is?

If it requires an explanation, don't explain.

Re: Microsoft Is Said to Have Agreed to Acquire GitHub

#647

Post by Clubber »

ebbv wrote: post #612
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…

What? Microsoft is the biggest developer advocate? Apple gives X Code away for free and made Swift an open source, platform agnostic product among many other things.

VS community is free, as is SQL Express. Net Core is also open source and platform agnostic.

Re: Microsoft Is Said to Have Agreed to Acquire GitHub

#648

Post by threeseed »

closeparen wrote: post #371
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…

This dovetails nicely with Windows Subsystem for Linux, VS Code, and Microsoft’s ongoing play to capture the Silicon Valley hipster development ecosystem that Apple is alienating.

> Silicon Valley hipster development ecosystem that Apple is alienating

Not sure what you mean here.

They've never specifically targeted non-Apple developers as a core constituency. It was mainly due to the fact that OSX was UNIX derived that the platform became popular at all.

Re: Microsoft Is Said to Have Agreed to Acquire GitHub

#649

Post by sytse »

bamboozled wrote: post #535
indigochill wrote: post #339

Heck, I already prefer Gitlab and/or Bitbucket because they let me run free (or at least self-hosted in Gitlab's case, not sure what their hosted option's like) private repos. Github's just got the mindshare going for it. But maybe now that'll change.

What makes you think the same thing won’t happen to GitLab? No one would’ve dreamed of this happening 5-10 years back.

GitLab took external investments will have a liquidity event at some point. That means an acquisition or an IPO. Right now we're aiming for an IPO https://about.gitlab.com/strategy/#goals as we have since 2015 when we took the first external investment.
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