Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Microsoft acquires Github

blogs.microsoft.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

71–80 of 840 posts

Re: Microsoft acquires Github

#71

Post by ekianjo »

crazygringo wrote: post #36
codetrotter wrote: post #15

> And Microsoft is all-in on open source. We have been on a journey with open source, and today we are active in the open source ecosystem, we contribute to open source projects, and some of our most vibrant developer tools and frameworks are open source. When it comes to our commitment to open source, judge us by the actions we have taken in the recent past, our actions today, and in the future. It’s a fair point bu…

Corporations aren't people. If you change the leadership and change employee incentives, it might as well be a different company. Sure there's cultural inertia... but incentives trump culture every time.

But incentives are still very much in the hand of shareholders who have been rewarding and continue to reward Microsoft's predatory stance on the market (including its continuous abuse of patents against open-source projects like Android and Linux).

So yeah, they are "all in on Open source", right.

Re: Microsoft acquires Github

#72

Post by EnderMB »

oblio wrote: post #5

> Once the acquisition closes later this year, GitHub will be led by CEO Nat Friedman, an open source veteran and founder of Xamarin, who will continue to report to Microsoft Cloud + AI Group Executive Vice President Scott Guthrie; GitHub CEO and Co-Founder Chris Wanstrath will be a technical fellow at Microsoft, also reporting to Scott.

This was one of the main outcomes I was hoping for in the last HN thread on this acquisition. GitHub get the strong CEO they were hoping for, and one with solid credentials with interacting with the development community.

Re: Microsoft acquires Github

#73

Post by TheCondor »

atonse wrote: post #12
chrisper wrote: post #4

Empower, extend, extinguish? Or was it different?

I’m so tired of this trope. It’s like nothing Microsoft does is ever enough for people to realize that there is enough new leadership that isn’t doing this nonsense. Is there any evidence in the Nadella years of MS doing this in the way they used to do this in the 90s?

So a new CEO and the established culture just automatically changes?

It’s not just that MSFT did what they did, but they established a culture that was cool with it and even came up with the ideas. How do we know they are no longer doing that? It’s not like they openly admitted to what they did in the 1990s...

Re: Microsoft acquires Github

#75

Post by matthewmacleod »

pavlov wrote: post #50
ulkesh wrote: post #20

The real question everyone should be asking is whether Microsoft is trustworthy, cognizant, and honorable enough to be the steward of such a major player that facilitates a large portion of open source software. This has me very concerned for the open source community.

Why were you not concerned previously about an unprofitable SV startup holding that central position? GitHub wasn’t a non-profit. This was always the endgame for them. They were losing money to acquire a userbase that would be sold when the time is right — just like WhatsApp and numerous other big social SV plays.

Remember that _GitHub used to be profitable_. Then they took $250m in investment and became unprofitable.

Re: Microsoft acquires Github

#76

Post by Iv »

bad_user wrote: post #32

People keep mentioning how "Microsoft changed" due to VS Code, the Linux subsystem, .NET Core. I say that they are the same company, only with different cash cows. Haven't they spied on Windows 10 users? Do they not engage in patents racketeering? Haven't they killed Nokia and ruined Skype? " But Mom, some of the other companies are doing it too ", well yeah, but some of us don't have double standards, in spite of wh…

Exactly. Microsoft ethos is still despicable.

Re: Microsoft acquires Github

#77

Post by zimablue »

crazygringo wrote: post #36
codetrotter wrote: post #15

> And Microsoft is all-in on open source. We have been on a journey with open source, and today we are active in the open source ecosystem, we contribute to open source projects, and some of our most vibrant developer tools and frameworks are open source. When it comes to our commitment to open source, judge us by the actions we have taken in the recent past, our actions today, and in the future. It’s a fair point bu…

Corporations aren't people. If you change the leadership and change employee incentives, it might as well be a different company. Sure there's cultural inertia... but incentives trump culture every time.

I'd argue that the incentives of a company who made their fortune and moat on deliberately incompatible lock-in OS/software are permanently broken, so I agree with you but come to the opposite conclusion.

Re: Microsoft acquires Github

#78

Post by digitalsushi »

ulkesh wrote: post #20

The real question everyone should be asking is whether Microsoft is trustworthy, cognizant, and honorable enough to be the steward of such a major player that facilitates a large portion of open source software. This has me very concerned for the open source community.

I am not feeling extremely concerned, since every developer has almost or exactly an identical copy of the repository in at least one location, and can push that entire repository to another location with two commands. This would probably be the most difficult genie to put back into a bottle.

Re: Microsoft acquires Github

#79

Post by marpstar »

bovermyer wrote: post #37

This line in particular caught my attention: > Finally, we will bring Microsoft’s developer tools and services to new audiences. Does this mean we'll see some sort of VSCode-esque IDE built into GitHub's UI? Or perhaps exposure of VSTS to people who previously weren't aware of it?

I can envision something like "Deploy to Azure" support as well.

Re: Microsoft acquires Github

#80

Post by kthejoker2 »

Ajedi32 wrote: post #29

They do seem to be trying to reassure people that they're not gonna mess this up: > And Microsoft is all-in on open source. We have been on a journey with open source, and today we are active in the open source ecosystem, we contribute to open source projects, and some of our most vibrant developer tools and frameworks are open source. When it comes to our commitment to open source, judge us by the actions we have ta…

Of course they are, have you read all the HN posts on the subject? People literally called them "fundamentally reprehensible."

It's not too much to say that they more or less only have upside here - if they can more or less keep their hands off GitHub's community and mindshare while expanding its capabilities and services, it'll be one more notch in their belt of "See? We're not Gates or Ballmer."

Post reply on HN