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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

#371

Post by hedora »

prepend wrote: post #315
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.

I don’t know, isn’t Microsoft the only software company left? I love Google, but they sell ads, their mission isn’t to make software. Microsoft is more and more cloud and services, but they still have a developer mentality and they have done some good stuff with open source lately. If someone is going to buy Github, Microsoft is probably the most friendly to developers. Unless Google or Facebook wants to go full altr…

Ignoring Azure, all the major MS products I can think of are at least partially ad supported (even when they release something that doesn’t serve ads, it’s a safe bet that it gathers data for better targeting...)

Re: Microsoft and GitHub have held acquisition talks

#372

Post by earenndil »

ggg9990 wrote: post #342
derrikcurran wrote: post #299

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Microsoft was actually highly successful under Ballmer. Just not in terms of image or in the consumer-facing world.

They made a lot of money, but were not successful. Business software companies become irrelevant decades before their revenues go away (eg IBM). Microsoft lost its future relevance under Ballmer.

Ballmer may have hurt microsoft, but they are still alive and well. The truth of it is that for a lot of things they do, there just isn't a competitor, nor will one arise soon. No one is replacing excel. As for windows -- there are a couple of niches where mac or linux could step in, but for most of them, that just isn't an option. Azure, typescript, vscode, ms office, office 365 are massively successful.

Re: Microsoft and GitHub have held acquisition talks

#373

Post by hedora »

prepend wrote: post #315
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.

I don’t know, isn’t Microsoft the only software company left? I love Google, but they sell ads, their mission isn’t to make software. Microsoft is more and more cloud and services, but they still have a developer mentality and they have done some good stuff with open source lately. If someone is going to buy Github, Microsoft is probably the most friendly to developers. Unless Google or Facebook wants to go full altr…

Most of the big software firms also make hardware these days (unless they are selling open source or managed services).

Examples include Apple, most of the enterprise hardware space, IoT/wearables, *aaS, the top 10-100ish cloud vendors, etc.

Even Microsoft is a hardware company now.

Re: Microsoft and GitHub have held acquisition talks

#375

Post by paranoidrobot »

p1esk wrote: post #311
sametmax wrote: post #52

The ghost of the skype acquisition would make me panic.

Why? I've been using Skype as my main video/text chat app since ~2002. It hasn't changed much after the acquisition.

I used to like Skype, but they've made a bunch of terrible choices.

Their integration of Microsoft Messenger and Microsoft IDs into Skype has meant that I now have two or three contacts for some people, and I have to switch which contact I send messages to depending on what device they are currently using.

They've also broken other basic functionality like sending messages - even with a solid internet connection on both sides, it will often refuse to send messages leaving them in a 'Sending' state. Other times i'll be in the middle of a conversation and I won't get a reply to certain messages that appear to have sent correctly. Hours or days later I'll get a confused "What?" message from that person, to which I've got no idea what they're talking about, and then they send me a screenshot showing a half dozen messages suddenly showing up from previous conversations.

Then there's situations where I'll get messages on one device, but not on another (eg phone). So I've got someone pissed at me because I'm not responding to them, when the notifications are all piling up on my phone or another laptop, or whatever.

All in all, Skype has become so unreliable that I will only use it to make calls, because at least that way I can be sure the messages are getting through.

Re: Microsoft and GitHub have held acquisition talks

#376

Post by PretzelFisch »

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.

GitHub sales a product ms competes with.

Re: Microsoft and GitHub have held acquisition talks

#377

Post by guitarbill »

therealtomsmith wrote: post #310
user5994461 wrote: post #103

This is negative value. The only reason the big companies host their source code on GitHub is because it's independent. They will stop doing that tomorrow if GitHub is acquired and it will lose all its value.

As someone who has always despised git for its complexity and being a movement more than a new technology I have been waiting years for this. Let git fracture and die. Maybe then we can get tools that work for us instead of the other way around.

I enjoy Mercurial as much as the next person. But git is an engineering feat simply because it works well enough for so many use cases. Also, if git is the worst part of your tooling, that's some great tooling and a good problem to have.

Re: Microsoft and GitHub have held acquisition talks

#378

Post by AnIdiotOnTheNet »

gsich wrote: post #308
AnIdiotOnTheNet wrote: post #292

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's kinda my point though. The strawman user these kinds of arguments prop up as the reason everything needs to suck is pretty much 100% consumer. There might be a few things, like typing documents and printing that aren't entirely covered by smartphones, tablets, and chromebooks, but that's a rapidly shrinking set of things.

>but that's a rapidly shrinking set of things Doubt that. "Desktop" is defined by mouse, keyboard and display. A chromebook satisfies this. I have yet to meet a user who uses a smartphone instead of a PC to do stuff that are notably easier to do on a PC. (while having both) I would also bet that every user would chose a keyboard over a touch interface to type text.

Maybe you have a point, but I don't feel like connecting a bluetooth keyboard and mouse to a smartphone makes it a desktop. Regardless, I don't think those OSs are good desktop OSs either. I still maintain that this is a poor excuse for having shitty tools.

Re: Microsoft and GitHub have held acquisition talks

#379

Post by sargun »

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.

So, previously Microsoft used to have a program to integrate new companies, called “venture integrations”. I wonder if LinkedIn is going through VI, or not.

Re: Microsoft and GitHub have held acquisition talks

#380

Post by earenndil »

hedora wrote: post #371
prepend wrote: post #315

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t know, isn’t Microsoft the only software company left? I love Google, but they sell ads, their mission isn’t to make software. Microsoft is more and more cloud and services, but they still have a developer mentality and they have done some good stuff with open source lately. If someone is going to buy Github, Microsoft is probably the most friendly to developers. Unless Google or Facebook wants to go full altr…

Ignoring Azure, all the major MS products I can think of are at least partially ad supported (even when they release something that doesn’t serve ads, it’s a safe bet that it gathers data for better targeting...)

Office is ad-supported? vscode and typescript are ad-supported? MSSQL is ad-supported?
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