
Microsoft and GitHub have held acquisition talks - coloneltcb
http://www.businessinsider.com/2-billion-startup-github-could-be-for-sale-microsoft-2018-5
======
AgentK20
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.

~~~
giancarlostoro
To be fair they haven't screwed up LinkedIn. I think they will let GitHub grow
with their resources.

~~~
nkkollaw
How about Skype, though?

People loved Skype so much, it was really a feat to make people hate it.

~~~
KyeRussell
They undoubtedly did a bad job, but I think that Skype has a lot going against
it from external factors anyway.

Everyone I know is using FaceTime or Facebook Messenger. The only time I hear
Skype anymore is people using it for podcasts. Obvious anecdata but it seems
reasonable that services with better device integration (FaceTime) or social
graph access (Facebook) would do better in the long run.

~~~
sandov
Or google hangouts. It's skype but in the web and with an interface that
actually works.

~~~
rapind
Hangouts is a great example of another horrible UI. The whole tie in to Chrome
made it unusable for anyone non technical (where did it go? What did you want
me to click? I am in the call, but you're not there... oh you're in another
call? How do you hangup? I don't see the window anymore, etc.)

A standalone app would fix this, but there seems to be some strange internal
agenda tying it to Chrome... Chromebooks I guess?

------
ATsch
Many people mention Microsoft's past history as reasons for worrying about
this. However, I disagree. I don't think this would be bad because it's
Microsoft.

I think it would be bad because GitHub wouldn't be a generally independent
entity, with no business interests besides making a product good enough that
people will pay for it anymore. Currently, GitHub doesn't really have any
incentive to care what tools and platform you are using, or where you deploy
your code. To the contrary, they want to appeal to the widest audience
possible.

This would all change if owned by Microsoft. GitHubs role would then instead
likely instead be to channel users into other Microsoft products and services,
especially Azure. Instead of functionality that benefits everyone independent
of platform, it will be in their interest to add features that only benefit
users of the Microsoft ecosystem. Azure CI, deploy to Azure, .NET integration,
LinkedIn integration. I don't think this is the kind of platform most FOSS
projects would want to use, certainly not me.

~~~
pcthrowaway
This is what I was thinking also (though you articulated it much better than I
would have).

A large company doesn't make an acquisition like this without a business
incentive. For them, it's driving people to their products. Maybe making the
tooling in github for interacting with microsoft-y products a little bit
better. Maybe adding whatever licenses microsoft likes to the front of the
default licenses you can pick from when you create a new repo. Things
generated by their editors going into your .gitignore by default.

I don't see any reason they'd acquire github and then entirely leave it alone.

~~~
h1d
Maybe MS understands this concern and at least keeps it comfortable for the
devs not to leave for alternatives else what's the point.

------
londondev45
Microsoft has embraced Github with it's recent .Net core development, they are
one of the largest contributors with some incredible cross platform dev
tooling. C# is a pleasure and visual studio code is an excellent, extensible
coding tool.

Go forth Microsoft, the standard bashing in these communities is unjust.

~~~
AnIdiotOnTheNet
I lived through the 90s, so I disagree. Anyone who feels perfectly comfortable
with Microsoft's _embracing_ of things they like is ignoring history.

Maybe it's different this time, maybe it isn't.

~~~
amag
I lived through the nineties as well, that doesn't mean I think everything
that was amazing back then still is amazing today nor that everything that
sucked back then still sucks today...

I think the Microsoft of today is _very_ different from the Microsoft of the
nineties.

Personally I'm not so much worried about Microsoft going back to Microsoft'95
but more about the fact that they, like most (all?) other big tech companies,
collect more and more data and integrate more and more tightly into our lives.
Still I feel that currently Facebook, Google and Amazon are all scarier in
that respect.

~~~
severino
> I think the Microsoft of today is very different from the Microsoft of the
> nineties.

If they've managed to change that much, then nothing prevents them to make the
opposite turn and return to the monopolistic Microsoft as soon as a new CEO
steps in.

That's why I prefer Microsoft to stay away from the products and projects
everybody loves. Furthermore, I don't think Microsoft has anything to
contribute to GitHub.

~~~
lev99
> I don't think Microsoft has anything to contribute to GitHub.

Microsoft has experience handling online code repositories and team services.
Azure integration has the potential to improve deployment pipelines for many
users. Microsoft has lots of experience doing things at scale, and can
potentially find cost reduction maneuvers for Github. Visual Studio
integration can bring more users to Github. Cooperate users are more likely to
upgrade their existing agreement with Microsoft than they are to enter a
finical relationship with a new company. Microsoft has just as much or more to
offer Github as any other top 5 tech company.

~~~
amag
Let's not forget that they developed GVFS to support large monorepos.

~~~
severino
Let's also not forget this only runs on Windows.

~~~
Rychard
They've stated that they want to bring this to other platforms as well.

[https://github.com/Microsoft/GVFS/issues/4](https://github.com/Microsoft/GVFS/issues/4)

~~~
severino
Yes they want... yet it has been Windows only for a year and a half, so far.
That's the problem with Microsoft buying big things like Github. It turns
people not using their flagship OS into second class citizens.

~~~
rovr138
Re: Skype

------
drenvuk
The one thing that I like about Github is that everything is public by default
and you have to pay to keep your code private. I feel like a positive
consequence of that business choice was the opening up of way more software.
Gitlab, while being very awesome doesn't have that same rule and neither does
Bitbucket. It's my assumption that this is the biggest reason there's so much
open source code flowing right now.

It makes me wonder whether I'll be able to find as many random interesting
projects just by searching for things anymore.

I'm a bit sad about this.

~~~
antonkm
Not having to pay for private is the reason we chose Bitbucket back in the
days.

~~~
drenvuk
Same here, but for each one of us there was another who probably said 'screw
it' and just put their stuff on github anyway.

------
smacktoward
Looking forward to the big rebranding to Microsoft GitHub Team Cloud Services
for Enterprise 365 2019®.

~~~
Jaymoon85
*subscription required

------
skellera
Seems like the view here is pretty negative. I feel like most people here
haven't worked with Microsoft dev products recently. They're getting better. I
guess the crowd here isn't typically in the .NET world.

~~~
kosinus
I think that's the point. I'm personally worried Microsoft may have a very
narrow view of what GitHub is. A lot of tech hosted there doesn't even run on
Windows, or isn't even related to software. (legal, political, docs, guides,
etc.)

~~~
nikofeyn
what makes you think that? they killed off their own code hosting site in
codeplex and moved everything to github. they are one of the largest if not
the largest open source contributors in the world. and .net core is setting
itself up to be a major player in cross-platform application development. it
has a chance, if microsoft brings over uwp, wpf, and windows forms to .net
core, to take over cross-platform gui development. with the windows subsystem
for linux, windows 10 can run most linux-based software. they've developed the
hottest ide at the moment on top of github developed technology.

i have a feeling they get it just fine.

~~~
kosinus
You mention a lot of stuff that's in the same '.NET world' skellera mentioned,
but the currently dominant GUI platform is the web, and neither is going to do
take over. There's also still embedded software, hardware description,
databases, emulators/simulators, competing virtual machines and GUI
frameworks, a whole bunch of non-tech stuff, etc.

They do get a lot of this stuff, but I feel like whatever they want to do with
Github is more geared towards average Joe .NET developer. Possibly making the
platform less attractive for everything else through neglect.

~~~
skellera
The new Microsoft has made it clear that they want to support as many areas as
they can. Azure does not have any lock-in of a specific platform (other than
Azure itself in some ways) and Microsoft is constantly trying to get their
tools to work in Linux and Mac. While they obviously would prefer you to be on
.Net, they realize that lock-in ultimately hurts them.

Just give it a little more time. They are turning around years of company
culture and they're doing a great job at it. If VS Code is a sign of future
products, I'm excited to see what they come out with down the road.

------
sametmax
The ghost of the skype acquisition would make me panic.

~~~
p1esk
Why? I've been using Skype as my main video/text chat app since ~2002. It
hasn't changed much after the acquisition.

~~~
ohashi
Really? It's become nearly unusable for me. I used to have it open all the
time and talk to lots of people. Now it feels closer to an infection on my
computer that I only pull up when I have to talk to someone on it and then
promptly struggle to logout and make sure it's truly closed.

~~~
mhh__
Comparison of Skype to (Say) Discord is like a different universe (Sometimes
[Electron!])

------
TimTheTinker
I haven't bashed Microsoft for a long time, and I won't any time soon.
However, this development has me worried.

There's a big difference between _engaging_ the developer community with great
products and _purchasing_ important services that the developer community
relies on.

Microsoft has succeeded many times with products and services they've built
themselves, and with products they've purchased, but how often have they
succeeded with services they've purchased?

~~~
oblio
Powerpoint was a purchase. Hotmail was another one. Frontpage, Visio,
Navision, Skype, Linkedin. They’ve had quite a few which were pretty
successful.

~~~
TimTheTinker
Most of those are products. Of the services you mentioned, I would only call
Hotmail a success in the sense that there wasn’t a net detriment to users
because of the purchase.

~~~
oblio
Linkedin is the same. Skype kind of sucks.

------
pixelmonkey
Github shouldn't sell. It has an opportunity to be a once-in-a-generation tech
company. I can't believe they even held the talks.

~~~
sametmax
Maybe the founders are fed up with running it. I can understand you want out,
and it's very hard to find people to replace you, and much easier to sell it
to a big entity that is already used to do something like that.

------
api_or_ipa
I can't help but be insanely sceptical. Microsoft has a massive legacy of
Embrace, Extend, Extinguish and I don't want the GitHub ecosystem to suffer
from the same reoccurring pattern. Call me jaded by Microsoft's past
behaviour, but I just cannot forget the numerous times Microsoft has
absolutely ruined thriving ecosystems by using the same tricks.

~~~
Someone1234
Microsoft wouldn't benefit from killing GitHub.

Heck Microsoft killed their own competitor TFS and pushed people to migrate to
Git, and uses GitHub themselves for hosting several products. Microsoft also
has full Git support in Visual Studio Online (their enterprise competitor to
GitHub), Visual Studio, and VS Code.

Microsoft would likely use GitHub to advertise their development products,
tools, and services like Azure. I doubt they'd want to "extinguish" GitHub
because it just means less eyes on their adverts.

~~~
gmueckl
They extinguished Skype. They will manage to do the same with Github
eventually. They are the biggest user already and would therefore be forced to
cater to their own needs first over those of the rest if the community. This
would drive the service squarely into the ground by doing everything right.

------
neaanopri
Why does GitHub need to be acquired at all?

Do the costs of running the servers and hosting the free services not cover
the revenue from Enterprise users?

I believe that any Enterprise users won't notice even a doubling of the
subscription fee, if GitHub really needs it.

I don't know why there needs to be more than a handful of employees working at
github, just don't break what's already there!

~~~
rrcaptain
>Why does GitHub need to be acquired at all?

So VCs can cash in.

~~~
hobofan
IPO?

~~~
rrcaptain
Because that turned out so well for Etsy.

~~~
winslow
What happened with Etsy? Their stock price has recovered to their IPO price.
It did seem bad from an internal sense with layoffs etc.

~~~
rrcaptain
Exactly. The spirit of what they were trying to do got killed.

------
user5994461
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.

~~~
therealtomsmith
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.

~~~
guitarbill
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.

~~~
therealtomsmith
lol an engineering feat.

It's just software. My experience with git was about a month long phase where
I devoted a few hours a week to learning it. Now I can use it but I still have
to google commands for anything other than the basics. That's the problem with
git. Git without google would be unusable. That's why I consider it to be
extraordinarily poorly designed. You've seen git commands, I'm not going to go
look up some esoteric command just to prove a point to you. The point is a
good program would not force you to google everything, it would just work.

I consider git to be more of an advertising feat. It fascinates me how many
people drank the kool-aid.

------
voidwtf
So, Which Microsoft login will I need to use for Microsoft GitHub?

My Microsoft Personal Account? Microsoft Work Account? Azure AD Account?
Microsoft GitHub account?

p.s. All of the accounts have the same username, you just try different
password and 2FA combinations til it works.

~~~
amf12
Does that not depend on you? Personal account - well that's your personal
account ending in maybe @outlook.com

Microsoft Work Account - Defined by your workplace. Ending in @workplace.com

Azure AD Account - Same as your work account, unless your workplace uses a
different tenant account for Azure.

Github Account - Well they still need to support the older accounts.

------
iambateman
For the comparisons of this acquisition to Skype, yes Microsoft bungled the
Skype acquisition.

But they have been killing it with Typescript and Visual Studio. I feel like
that at such a large company, the Typescript recent history matters more than
the Skype history. Two very different areas with different people in charge,
etc.

~~~
sametmax
As much as I love VSCode, you live in a buble. A communication app affects way
more people than a programming language or a text editor. Even my mother uses
the former, while only a fraction of all the programmers I met in my life use
the laters.

And MS did messed up on other major products or companies

\- Rare video games. They did freaking golden eyes and conkers bad day and
they manage to kill it.

\- they messed up Wn10, which is still not as good as Win7 after all those
years but spies more on you and forces update at the worse moment on you

\- the latest outlook is barely usable. Sometime mails can't be sent. Sometime
it freezes or crashes. It's very slow, the search sucks and I never find the
buttons I'm looking for.

\- they killed Nokia and the windows phone despite all the investments the
community did in it. And it was considered a good product.

\- they are milking minecraft like disney is milking SW, so that all the
creative community has moved to private servers.

I mean, we are talking about a company that had a monopoly on the media player
and the web browser on the most used OS in the world. The player and browser,
the most used software ever by the non tech saavy users.

And to this day, none of their versions is remotely as good as the
competition.

~~~
tracker1
Win10 could be better than win7, but too much time adding in ads and not
enough refactoring the old UX all the way.

~~~
sametmax
It really could. And they did try, at least the system PATH UI is better :)

------
AnIdiotOnTheNet
Could be worse. It could be Oracle.

~~~
erichurkman
Or IBM.

~~~
jamiepenney
Or Google. At least Oracle would keep its dead corpse alive while it was still
producing revenue.

~~~
warent
Until Oracle starts opening up lawsuits against people/companies that have
high traffic open source projects

~~~
oaiey
Oracle will declare it their code and start sueing :)

------
openfuture
Aaand this is the weakness of centralizing everything in Github. Inevitable
that it gets acquired by something with other motives (or is forced to exploit
its central position in some way because business). The fact it may be
Microsoft that seals the deal is just a cherry on top.

We need proper decentralization.

There could still be aggregators for browsing projects and bookmarking but the
structural weakness of keeping all the eggs in one basket will never go away.
No matter how much wishful thinking you throw at it.

~~~
hk__2
> We need proper decentralization.

> There could still be aggregators for browsing projects and bookmarking but
> the structural weakness of keeping all the eggs in one basket will never go
> away. No matter how much wishful thinking you throw at it.

The Web is decentralized, and so everybody’s using Google to discover it. The
problem with decentralization is you still need global entry points, i.e. some
sort of centralization.

~~~
openfuture
These entry points could be run by networked organizations like Sensorica
(except more developed) and run on free software.

------
bborud
As a long time GitHub user I really do hope these talks do not result in an
acquisition. I would really like GitHub to be independent from OS vendors, or
vendors of platforms, ecosystems, compilers, IDEs etc.

I want GitHub's goal to be a good GitHub. Not a good part of the Microsoft
ecosystem. Those may initially be the same, but it takes very little for them
to not be the same.

------
thosakwe
Something makes me feel like Microsoft acquiring Github will do away with
Github's current, open nature.

If the extreme advertising in Windows 10 is any sign...

~~~
tomovo
At first they will just inject random commits that don't change any files but
inform you about the latest price offerings on One Drive and Azure hosting.
Later on if you're still on the "free" plan some of the commits will modify
your hosted software to show their ads at runtime. Have fun!

~~~
deedubaya
This comment made me giggle at first, but then the truth hidden in the
outlandish idea hit home and I cried a little bit.

~~~
oaiey
They are not that foolish. The only company that stupid was the one behind
sourceforge.

------
monodeldiablo
This seems, to me, to illustrate perfectly how Microsoft still doesn't
understand open source as an idea nor as a culture. The whole movement exists
as a reaction against central, corporate control.

Large companies think that, by acquiring important hosted open source
infrastructure, they'll somehow acquire the users or act as gatekeepers. But
open source tooling is so decentralized these days that is not easy to be a
captive user. The cost of switching is so low -- plenty of other comparable
services supply collaborative utilities for git -- that, for most projects, a
weekend spent altering URLs and configs should suffice.

If such a deal goes through, Microsoft will spend millions on the acquisition
and, simultaneously, alternative providers who appear more independent
(Gitlab, BitBucket, etc) will see a surge in new accounts.

And I, for one, think it'd be a good thing for open source. Every time an OSS
sugar daddy turns on its users -- SourceForge, BitKeeper, Oracle, SCO, etc --
the community has grown more robust, more decentralized, and more resilient.

------
geokon
Does anyone have insight into what they're been working on recently at Github?
I feel like the user experience hasn't changed/improved in the last couple of
years at all. It feels to me like there is a lot of low hanging fruit to make
a ton of money. For one they could integrate or replicate the functionality of
Bountysource and let people donate to users. There is also tons of room for
improvement in licensing like making copywriter-assignment frictionless and
letting people dual license their software (so I could at a click of a button
buy a proprietary license for someone's GPL'd library)

------
tootie
People are being overly pessimistic. This would be a potentially great deal.
GitHub is very successful at what they do and I don't think MS would change
that. More likely they would use GH as lead-in to selling cloud services the
same way Google uses GitLab.

~~~
parvenu74
If you've watched the last couple Build Conferences (Microsoft's annual
developer conference) they frequently demonstrate their CI/CD pipeline based
on Github checkins, not VSTS checkins (just takes a webhook invocation and all
the source-hosting sites support sending those out on check-in or merge).

~~~
falcon620
A zillion companies use Github. This does not qualify them to operate Github.

~~~
parvenu74
Hasn't GitHub been running on Microsoft Azure for a few years now?

~~~
colemickens
What does GitHub's choice of cloud have to do with Microsoft's aptitude to
take over an existing, huge, critical piece of the open source world? From a
business perspective, or an operational one?

------
ttam
these talks are actually not new. the same rumor appeared back in 2016
[https://techcrunch.com/2016/10/07/github-is-raising-a-
second...](https://techcrunch.com/2016/10/07/github-is-raising-a-secondary-
round/)

imho, github feels a bit too slow innovating, which is kinda surprising since
they are still "a startup"

~~~
dudus
I have the opposite opinion. I think every few months I see an interesting
feature being added that are slowly making github a better platform. Just for
the last few months we've seen a lot of improvements for Enterprise,
improvement to gitHub pages, saved replies, team discussions, security alerts.
I love the pace they have to release meaningful improvements.

~~~
wooter
i'm also a big fan of the atom editor

~~~
nkkollaw
Yes, it's so snappy...

~~~
hedora
Indeed; why pay the overhead of shared libraries or timely security updates:
[https://www.noobslab.com/2017/07/atom-text-editor-can-now-
be...](https://www.noobslab.com/2017/07/atom-text-editor-can-now-be-
installed.html)

------
zmmmmm
It's getting depressing to see that mid tier companies are all now reliably
getting swallowed up by larger ones. It is starting to feel like the golden
age of technology - where brand new small companies emerge and become giant
ones - is waning. Were Google, Amazon and Facebook actually the last of the
tech giants to emerge and from now on, it's just a procession of watching
every other company merge into the existing 5 or 6 big companies? I guess it
is inevitable but it still makes me sad if we are transitioning to a more
mature, but fundamentally more boring phase.

~~~
meiraleal
I think it is a cycle. When the middle tier companies vanish, the small ones
start to rise again.

------
sbr464
I really hope this doesn't happen. Microsoft design and services are all over
the board, not in a good way. I'm sure they would add more features, or make
it more enterprise-y, which could have benefits, but I would definitely move
to a self hosted setup if this went through. It's nice to have diversity of
brand/company personalities in the tech ecosystem.

------
PaulHoule
Oh shit.

I run Windows. I have respect for Microsoft. A lot of people do not, however,
and the sense that Microsoft is ritually unclean will drive many of them away
from github. It's the best thing that's happened to BitBucket and Altassian
ever. If I have a choice between MS tools and Altassian tools I will usually
take MS. (Visual Source Safe really did suck, but Visual Studio is not that
bad...)

Also, Microsoft acquisitions do not seem to go well. Look at Skype, LinkedIn,
etc.

~~~
tootie
Source Safe is ancient. TFS is their new jam and it's pretty solid. Especially
if you're in the Visual Studio and Azure world.

~~~
WorldMaker
TFS (or more accurately TFVC) is old news. Git is their new jam and it's
pretty solid. ;)

(Not entirely a joke. The Windows team has moved to git, which is a
fascinating sign of the times.)

------
0x0
Guess they could always relaunch VSS as "GitHub for Business" at the same time
then! :)

------
TooBrokeToBeg
An acquisition would mean the inevitable split of support between the MS
toolchain and the OS toolchain, which would eventually be left to die. Today's
MS is no different than yesterday's MS.

~~~
ams6110
> Today's MS is no different than yesterday's MS

I'm not sure that's true, but it is true that MS would have motivation to
leverage Github to promote other (licensed) MS software.

At a conference years ago, a Microsoft rep told me over beers that almost
everything his division did had the ultimate objective of selling more SQL
Server licenses. That's why SQL Server is a required component of almost all
MS enterprise software.

So you might for instance see a SQL Server backend option, and then "Github
Enterprise" sold with that configuration.

~~~
sdesol
> leverage Github to promote other (licensed) MS software.

This is pretty much business 101. You have loss leaders, that are solely
designed to drive traffic to different products.

------
ibdf
If anyone has used VSTS or TFS knows this is a bad bad idea. They tend to make
unnecessarily complicated user interfaces with poor usability.

~~~
pjmlp
I happen to like TFS, specially the triggers to prevent commits on broken unit
tests.

------
_bxg1
I'm happy that Microsoft has gotten so on board with git recently and made
contributions to the project, but this kind of consolidation still makes me
nervous, for multiple reasons.

~~~
craftyguy
What contributions has MS made to git?

~~~
detaro
They made a post listing some of their performance improvements last year:
[https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/devops/2018/01/11/microsoft...](https://blogs.msdn.microsoft.com/devops/2018/01/11/microsofts-
performance-contributions-to-git-in-2017/)

------
poisonborz
Are people here really reasoning like "C# / .Net and VSCode are really great
SO Microsoft acquiring GitHub would surely end well".

What is the connection between SOME of their newer dev tools being good (oh,
just try the mess that is Visual Studio) and... well, anything else.

~~~
danso
You believe that these well-liked tools/initiatives were random anomalies,
born independently from and untouched by Microsoft's leadership?

------
mindcrime
GitLab here we come...

~~~
falcon620
More like "gah, we're going to have to self-host git, aren't we"?

~~~
akerro
Or you know... just use gitlab.com...

~~~
falcon620
I don't trust them to be compent at operating a large scale service after
their insane meltdown february last year.

[https://www.theregister.co.uk/2017/02/01/gitlab_data_loss/](https://www.theregister.co.uk/2017/02/01/gitlab_data_loss/)

~~~
Rjevski
Unrelated to that incident, but I feel their web UI to be extremely slow
lately. Working with PRs (or "merge requests" as GitLab calls them) and CI
pipeline is a pain, you're looking at 1 second response times.

~~~
sytse
We're not happy with the merge request speed either. We're close to converting
the merge request view to Vue, this should speed it up considerably.

~~~
Rjevski
To me it doesn't look like it's a front-end issue. I am mainly complaining
about the HTTP response time. It seems extremely slow on both pipelines and
merge requests, and Vue ain't gonna fix that I'm afraid.

I don't know if it's an optimisation issue with the software itself, or if
it's just GitLab.com being overloaded..

~~~
sytse
Because we're loading everything in one go the database query time and rails
rendering time adds up.

------
mihaela
I hope that a tragedy like MS acquiring GitHub does not happen, ever...

------
samatman
I can't understand why Github hasn't built out a clear path from repository
hosting, to continuous integration, ending in low-friction renting of cloud
instances.

I don't want Google or Amazon to buy them, and that almost leaves Azure.

It seems like something they could have done themselves a few years ago,
though. Puzzling.

------
speedplane
Considering that software powers most of the modern economy, it's pretty sad
how small the market is for quality software development tools. Programmers
get paid high six figures, but balk at paying for quality debugging tools.
Visual Studio, despite being a strong debugger and exceptional piece of
technology in its own right, is not a real revenue driver for MS, it's just an
exceptionally sophisticated way to nudge programmers to Microsoft's libraries
and platforms.

Github has generally been platform agnostic (except for git itself), and it
would sadden me to see Github start to compromise those values and start
favoring one platform or another. (One could easily see Github / Visual Studio
plugins, enabled by default, with built-in subtle nudges towards the MS Cloud
platform).

------
Joeri
If github had to be sold, which tech company would be a better buyer than
microsoft and able to afford a $2 billion acquisition?

~~~
ianwalter
Apple. I know it's not Apple's style but imagine if Apple started expanding
outside of it's bubble like Microsoft has. If they really went all in it would
be amazing.

~~~
discordance
I would prefer if Apple would continue to focus on making my phone better.
They really slipped up with their QA on recent iOS releases.

~~~
ianwalter
Yea but I don't think it's continued focus that will help here. Apple has
continued it's modus operandi and quality has decreased like you mentioned.
Granted, acquiring GitHub is most likely not the right fix, but I think
something about Apple's particular way of operating is holding it back.

------
whitepoplar
GitLab must be psyched for the potential influx of defectors.

~~~
detaro
or fearing for the stability of their servers...

------
rrcaptain
Not too keen on GitHub being acquired. If Microsoft wants to do something good
here, they should give GitHub enough money to form a Foundation similar to
Mozilla. That would be the best way GitHub could pursue its mission.

~~~
oaiey
That also crossed my mind. But they have shareholders.

------
sigfubar
This is our chance to gain a GitHub+LinkedIn integration. Just imagine... your
LinkedIn profile and endorsements will auto-populate based on commit & PR
activity.

~~~
jkelsey
That sounds horrifying.

~~~
hobofan
That pretty much already exists if it's easily identifiable that you are the
same user on both services.

------
htaunay
Don't really agree with most comments trashing this hypothetical deal,
bringing up the Skype precedent.

Its been what, 2 years since the Linked-in and Xamarin acquisitions? Nothing
seems to have changed. Microsoft just seems to know that the desktop is no
longer the cash cow that it used to be, office still is but may not last long,
so its a good idea to diversify its portfolio.

Satya is not Ballmer.

------
oneweekwonder
Only one mention of CodePlex[0] in the comments?

Microsoft had a "github" it could not compete and github took the mindshare.

Now it seems Microsoft want to buy that mindshare.

I wonder how many FOSS and other projects will jump ship once/if Microsoft
takes over.

[0]:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CodePlex](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CodePlex)

------
Yetanfou
I foresee a great future... for Gogs [1], Gitea [2], Gitlab [3] and other
Github-alternatives. I was a late and somewhat reluctant adopter of Github as
I don't like the idea of centralising so much of the free software
infrastructure and putting it in the hands of one company, even a supposedly
'friendly' company like Github. I mirror everything I do on Github to a local
Gitea-instance as a backup and exit strategy for when Github becomes a
liability. If these talks go through and Microsoft does take over the latter
will become true and I'll remove my accounts there.

[1] [https://gogs.io/](https://gogs.io/)

[2] [https://gitea.io/](https://gitea.io/)

[3] [https://gitlab.com/](https://gitlab.com/)

------
mimiflynn
I wonder how projects like Electron are figuring into the interest that
Microsoft has in GitHub. How would Microsoft move forward with such a project
if they bought GitHub? Would its continue to be based on Chromium? Would
future versions of Office follow VSCode and be build as Electron apps?

~~~
DaiPlusPlus
I was in DevDiv at the time of the launch of VS Code (but on a different
team): The pressure was on to ship a cross-platform editor ASAP to support the
new cross-platform .NET infrastructure. This was very much an "IBM PC"-project
with the Directors tasking a small team to get something done and to disregard
the NIH culture. Atom was chosen as the platform because it was already close
to what they needed with the right license. Heck, the rush to ship was so
intense that they screwed up the name (I forget the story exactly, but "VS
Code" was not the name the MSFT naming department came up with, but the name
they initially chose turned out to be used elsewhere and they didn't have the
time to come up with something trademarkable so they just sighed and shipped
as "Visual Studio Code").

Anyway - I think the VS Code experience helped with Microsoft's institutional
"fear" of pushing ahead with a JavaScript ecosystem elsewhere - I think the
knock-on effects contributed towards the Office org's recent announcement to
add JS as a first-class macro language in Excel, I just wish it was TypeScript
instead.

------
ASalazarMX
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.

~~~
seltzered_
Microsoft has been investing in developer services for a number of years -
they acquired hockeyapp (mac/ios crash analytics), and have a whole bunch of
other tools under the azure brand [https://azure.microsoft.com/en-
us/services/](https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/services/)

It's almost worth re-asking the question as...what does Azure want Github for,
to try and strip away thinking about MS's windows/office products. There could
be some crossover between github's Atom efforts and VS Code, and MS already
worked on projects like Git virtual filesystem (GVFS) for their own needs (
[https://github.com/Microsoft/gvfs](https://github.com/Microsoft/gvfs) )

~~~
emodendroket
Don't they already support a bunch of scenarios like deploying from GitHub?
It'd make sense in that way.

~~~
discordance
Visual Studio Team Services, although very capable, is nowhere near as popular
as GitHub.

I imagine this move will lead to more integrations there... Kind of like what
Microsoft did with Deis and their Kubernetes offerings.

------
igammarays
If SendGrid and Twilio could IPO, then surely GitHub can. Keep incentives
aligned and do that instead, please. If Microsoft acquired GH it would a non-
neutral platform, and I would be off to Gitlab immediately.

------
deft
.NET is great and the openness is great, I don't really see why so many people
are up in arms about this. Microsoft is a large user of github. Maybe this
will push you all to use gitlab ;)

------
ksec
I don't understand why all the bashing, there is no better time to cash in.
Gitlab in few years time will make Github worth less.

Gitlab.com and self host GitLab offer the best of both worlds. Gitlab right
now still isn't as good as Github, but it is good enough for many things. And
we see improvement coming in every few months. Not to mention Microsoft will
likely move the whole Github infrastructure to Azure.

------
cwyers
HOT TAKE: The things that drove Skype to change from the Golden Age Of Skype
were largely market-driven things like the rise of the smartphone that killed
pretty much every other popular communications platform at the time (AIM is
dead now, too) and there is no evidence that an independent Skype would have
weathered the market shift any better than a Microsoft-owned Skype did.

~~~
Rjevski
Disagreed.

Skype worked perfectly for me on smartphone, and the few quirks could've been
patched without screwing it up completely.

I feel like Skype was ahead of its time, it was essentially a cross-platform
iMessage & FaceTime that was mainstream.

Had Microsoft not fucked it up we'd still be happily using it.

------
CosmicBagel
I'm mostly indifferent, but would like point out that MS has managed their dev
products decently well. (At least the ones I use)

------
nixpulvis
I don't care if Microsoft is the new Apple, or anything like that. I just
don't want to see more consolidation.

------
xacky
It's ironic how Microsoft has embraced Git considering it was made for Linux's
development.

~~~
parvenu74
Microsoft has been the largest contributor to Git for a while. Getting to a
point where all of Windows is building out of Git repos has caused them to
solve problems that Git has never faced previously.

------
wepple
For all the silly unicorn IPOs of companies which don’t necessarily have a
clear product or revenue, GH seems like the type of company that could
successfully go public and actually succeed. It would fend off potential
suitors for a while too.

------
lioeters
As much as I love GitHub, if Microsoft acquires it I might start looking for
alternatives.

------
xkr47
Sign the petition: [https://www.change.org/p/microsoft-stop-microsoft-from-
buyin...](https://www.change.org/p/microsoft-stop-microsoft-from-buying-
github)

------
z3t4
I don't think anyone really understands what Github is. It's more like a
spirit then a thing. I bet Microsoft is prepared to pay a lot for the
goodwill, they don't care about the product/tech.

~~~
rrcaptain
GitHub being bought buy Microsoft is like the opposite of what it represents.
If Microsoft wants to pay for goodwill they should drop a big chunk of cash on
forming a GitHub Foundation similar to Mozilla.

------
vira28
I understand most of the concern about Microsofty way.

However, basically I see two different era for MS. Before Satya and After
Satya. So, I don't have any concern/worries in this acquisition.

------
aruggirello
If this goes through, it's going to impact users of Atom and VS Code - one of
the two has no reason to survive. I wouldn't be surprised if the former is
discontinued then.

------
youdontknowtho
That would be kind of awesome, but I don't know how the github culture would
meld with a big corporation. It would be an interesting case study for other
similar start ups.

~~~
forgottenpass
Didn't github already deliberately kill their own culture a few years back
with policy changes and a layer of middle management?

edit: This isn't snark. Didn't they legit cut a bunch of perks, refocus
everyone's priorities, and hire some people to start cracking whips? Or was I
reading the public accounts of that situation wrong? Got bad scuttlebutt?

~~~
youdontknowtho
I hadn't heard that. That stands to reason. Business people actually detest
that "flat organization" model. They really get off on hierarchy and power.

------
SanDimasFootbal
Aren't dev tools are going cloud. MS might have just bought a bunch of servers
with nasty dependencies on Jenkins in the hopes it results in more deployments
to Azure.

------
pasbesoin
E3 -- Embrace, Extend, Extinguish. Stems from at least the 1990's. The MS
behavior as opposed to the term can be argued to pre-date that decade.

I'll just remind people who may think I'm being old, crotchety, and living in
the past, that this has been a repeated pattern of theirs that has resurfaced
so often and reliably as to become considered by many to be a core component
of MS culture. Repeated including in the face of DoJ prosecution and
monitoring.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embrace,_extend,_and_extinguis...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Embrace,_extend,_and_extinguish)

~~~
ocdtrekkie
Almost nobody who even worked at Microsoft in 1996 still actually works at
Microsoft. You are bringing up something said in one meeting from when floppy
disks were still pretty important to the computing world.

I can't fathom a single statement from 1996 about a computer company that is
still accurate today, and EEE falls into that category as well.

~~~
hapnin
"postmaster@nsa.gov" is probably still true.

[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/NSAKEY](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/NSAKEY)

~~~
jwilk
Non-mobile link:

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NSAKEY](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/NSAKEY)

------
CryoLogic
This could be the best thing ever for GitLab. (see: Skype)

------
crb002
Not unless they bought red hat first and shipped Linux laptops unseating
Lenovo. Money is now in the mega data cloud center not the desktop market.

------
sbr464
LinkedIn won’t let you cancel your account if you’ve paid a year subscription.
The option simply doesn’t exist and their support is oblivious

------
DrBazza
This feels a bit like MS wanting to buy Yahoo, Nokia, and aQuantive. It feels
like Github is now resting on its laurels and has peaked.

------
themusicgod1
If Microsoft buys github I will be pulling all my repositories, deleting my
account, and finding any software that I use on github and quickly cloning it
and importing it to some competing server(Probably gitlab)...and I would
encourage everyone else to do the same.

 _edit_ In the meanwhile I would recommend filing an issue on _every single
project_ as you would normally file issues on, asking what their migration
plan in the event of a Microsoft takeover is, before, not after this happens.

------
kchoudhu
Time to spin up that Gitlab instance, I guess.

------
TomK32
Can't we do something like a customer-buy-out and put Github into a foundation
of some sort?

------
yawaramin
Microsoft should actually buy Slack.

~~~
seansmccullough
Already tried to clone it with Microsoft Teams.

~~~
yawaramin
I've used Teams. Microsoft should really buy Slack :-)

------
moistoreos
Leave it alone! Github pricing is perfect for all incomes. They'll slap on a
few features, create a tiered payment system and charge $20 for the first
tier.

100% will take my code somewhere else if this acquisition goes through. Go
acquire Atlassian if you want to "diversify" your portfolio. Go stick it up
your Azure MS.

------
Negative1
Trying to understand the cloud strategy here; does Github run on Azure, GCP or
AWS?

------
gaelow
I'd seriously consider migrating to bitbucket if this happens.

------
m6g6a
NO! GOD! PLEASE NO! [GIF]

------
ilaksh
Is there a truly decentralized peer to peer alternative to github or gitlab?
And please no lectures about how git is inherently decentralized. Obviously
there is something missing that causes us to rely on github etc.

------
qwerty456127
So this is why they have closed Codeplex!

------
stblack
The price as stated seems lowball to me.

------
m3kw9
GitHub: the ale requires you to keep us open.

Microsoft:..

------
lalos
A better fit would be Docker. Totally unrelated but I can see that as a better
fit with Azure rather than invest on the dev community around Github.

------
egberts1
I’m bailing if Github gets Windowized.

------
shmerl
Oh, oh. That doesn't sound good.

------
nejdetckenobi
They're literally ruining my life. First Minecraft, now GitHub? Congratz MS.
Now I hate you more.

------
qop
God yes! Please oust the GH execs too, thatd be such a blessing for the
product.

------
trisimix
Nonononononono

------
m3kw9
GitHub: the sale requires you to keep us open.

Microsoft:..

------
jaytaylor
Paywall bypass: [https://archive.is/V7Oyy](https://archive.is/V7Oyy)

------
tekknik
well I’m canceling my sub, thanks for ruining Github MS. Gitlab here I come!

------
nelsonic
please no! :-(

------
falcon620
Up next:

\- Github user account migration/integration with outlook.com

\- A much-internally-championed Github/Office/LinkedIn integration effort
created by some sharp but inexperieced program manager fresh just out of
Washington State, that happens to require Github project descriptions to be
authored in .docx format, launched as an improvement from that primitive
format made by a certain mac fanboy.

\- An effort to migrate the Github infrastructure to Azure cloud on Win 10
that ties up 85% of all development resources for the next five years and
ultimately fails.

~~~
oblio
For the last one: [https://technet.microsoft.com/en-
us/library/bb736149.aspx](https://technet.microsoft.com/en-
us/library/bb736149.aspx)

And that’s from when they weren’t allowed to use BSD or Linux internally and
Windows Server was rudimentary. Microsoft would have no problem migrating
Github to Azure quickly.

------
falcon620
Well, that's a scary thought.

------
falcon620
Hopefully it's just a negotiation tactic to get Google to buy them for more
than their first offer.

~~~
the_duke
Google is notorious for killing products too, though.

For me, much of the same rationale would apply

~~~
danso
Has Google ever killed an acquisition or product of Github's scale? Most
products that come to mind were niche things like iGoogle, or things that got
deprecated/integrated into other products, e.g. Buzz, Wave, Picasa

Google Reader is the product that seems to leave the most bitterness, but that
too seems to have been relatively niche.

Google killed Google Code in 2016 and moved much of their code base to Github.
Maybe they'll rebrand Github back to "Code", but outright killing it seems
unlikely.

~~~
adventured
Github is a niche product. Average people do not use it at all, its utility
value is entirely niche. The average person will never know what Github is or
what it does. It's useful to less than 2% of the US population, and less than
0.5% of the global population.

They've killed / destroyed / butchered large acquisitions before, yes.

Metaweb / Freebase cost them a reported $200-$300 million.

Feedburner cost them $100 million.

Slide.com cost them $228 million.

Motorola was a $12 billion disaster. They might as well have killed it.

DailyDeal cost them $114 million.

Wildfire Interactive cost them $450 million.

There are a couple dozen more in the $30m to $100m range.

