Jump to content

Microsoft buys GitHub: Good or Bad?


kongondo
 Share

Recommended Posts

https://www.theverge.com/2018/6/3/17422752/microsoft-github-acquisition-rumors

What's your take people? My first reaction was literally Nooooooo! Mind, I haven't looked at the details yet, but I feel like it doesn't matter what GitHub's reasons were; this should have been a no, no!  I've always considered GitHub as the face of open source. With MS taking over, I feel something sacrosanct has been 'defiled' irreversibly. 

Anyway, just my subjective 2p.

ps: I love and use MS products ?

Link to comment
Share on other sites

I'd say it's... GOOD!

Today Microsoft isn't the Microsoft it was decades ago and Microsoft does a lot of things right nowadays. 

They listen. They deliver. They do better than Apple.

Microsoft has the money to keep Github up and running.

I'd be much more concerned if it was Facebook, Oracle, IBM, SAP, Adobe, Amazon, Apple, Alibaba (and similar) or several others.

Who would have been better... Canonical, RedHat, any other free software foundation or company? I don't think so.

Update: just saw that Nat Friedman will be part of the new team. This is awesome. 

  • Like 5
Link to comment
Share on other sites

I really don't care. MS today isn't exactly what MS was 10-20 years ago. They've shown a lot of good will (and actions) when it comes to open-source lately. VS Code is a good, robust IDE - and completely free. MS is also actively involved in the W3C and many similar organizations. The Edge browser - though it will never become my browser of choice - is a solid piece of software. Eventually IE will be buried forever. MS didn't "get" the web (or open-source at large) in its early days, but they've "grown up", so to speak. They realize what's going on these days. What their particular motivation was for buying Github, we might never know. Maybe just a PR move, but really.... as long as you read the terms + conditions fine print in the coming days, and see for yourself what will be changed (if anything at all), I guess for most ppl it will be business as usual.

You could also argue it was an "evil" step when Oracle bought mySQL. But did the product actually deteriorate or went the way of the dodo? No, it's still alive and well.

  • Like 3
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Why I think it is bad MS took it over ? We'll MS is going clearly the way of "as a service" and collecting data as much as they can. Another example about MS changed policy: Windows 10 was never made for the user. What is happening inside Windows 10 these days is copied from Apple. I say Windows 10 has become a complete disaster with weekly Gigabytes of Updates. Did you know there are already 12 different versions of Windows 10 out there ?  Following the time line Win 95, 98, Me, 2000, XP, 7, Vista, 8, 10, ----- Windows 7 was the last Windows with the user in mind. I know a lot of people do not agree with this. This is just my personal opinion based on repairing computers for the last 20 years. I don't want to go in discussion with this, just add my 2 cents. Further: do you think Skype has been improved for the user since MS took it over ? MS policy is they just love users on an online MS account instead of a local computer account. I say it is bad, but I don't care. There will always be a workaround if needed, e.g. oracle mysql and mariadb.

Edited:

MS already smells that in the future their main source of income won't be windows and office anymore. There is a shift to as a service, cloud, etc. etc. So while they still have a box full of money they just bought Skype and maybe Github so they will still be there in the future. We are going to see more  acquisitions like this in the future.

  • Like 3
Link to comment
Share on other sites

1 hour ago, pwired said:

collecting data as much as they can

Yep, why does it include each machine running Windows? ? 

1 hour ago, pwired said:

Windows 10 has become a complete disaster with weekly Gigabytes of Updates.

+1 They call them "updates" but I'd call them replacing the complete system...

Since MS can no longer directly connect to the treasuries of governments around the globe, they need to connect directly to the wallets of people.

  • Like 2
Link to comment
Share on other sites

At first, I had a "Oh sh!t" moment when I first read about it. However. after reading a bit more, Im not too worried regarding the acquisition. I am curious if they will push for Azure integration over other cloud services, effectively sweeping the others under the rug.

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Definitely an interesting move, and I'm also wondering what Microsoft is planning to do with GitHub ?

How will the focus of the platform evolve and will there be new restrictions for projects or users? Do they plan to integrate GitHub more tightly with their own tools? Could this mean that they're so attached to the GitHub platform that they need to make sure one of their competitors doesn't buy it first? Or perhaps this is just one more step in their ongoing effort to impress developers?

There's not enough data to make any kind of educated guesses yet, so we'll just have to wait and see how it goes. One obvious thing is that a corporate entity like Microsoft wouldn't just go around buying services/platforms for the heck of it, or because said services/platforms have a great community, or whatever. Their primary goal will always be growing their business and bringing in more money – and somehow, directly or indirectly, GitHub is now part of that.

Although I'm not particularly worried, I do think it's reasonable to be a bit concerned when a massive corporation like Microsoft buys out a platform as influential as GitHub – especially when that influence is probably most prominent within the open source community and individual developers working on non-commercial projects. Anyway, I can't see how wrecking the legacy of GitHub would be good for their business, so there's (probably) no need to be worried.

  • Like 5
Link to comment
Share on other sites

I'm glad it's MS buying it and not some other company. (Imagine FB or Apple with their recent track record ..)

Their track record with Developers for most part has been pretty good especially of late, and I hope their involvement means more features that developers ask for (e.g. Folders to organise repos) will actually get delivered. I wouldn't be worried about MS stuffing this up unless it's people involved in Windows 10 and/or Skype are being transferred to work on Github.

There's been a bit of knee-jerk reaction with some devs jumping ship for Gitlab already but there's far too many Open Source projects on Github at the moment and I can't see any of them jumping ship to Gitlab, at least in the near future.

  • Like 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

Finally got around to watching this recent documentary about Microsoft's abuse of monopoly and its lobbying practices in the EU:

MS lobbyists using government email addresses and other fun stuff revealed!

  • Like 3
  • Thanks 1
Link to comment
Share on other sites

On 6/7/2018 at 4:03 PM, kongondo said:

Maybe includes some private repos afraid MS might snoop around their code.

There are no guarantees that Gitlab or any other providers won't do that either.

If people are afraid of snooping, they shouldn't check-in code to a 3rd party provider in the first place.

  • Like 4
Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 10 months later...

I think the Github acquisition all ties back to selling Cloud and other services to the Developer community.

MS is now a services company as Nadella likes to state. 

I guess future iterations of Github where it integrates with Azure and other MS Products will be the telltale sign

  • Like 3
Link to comment
Share on other sites

  • 1 year later...
  • 2 years later...

Create an account or sign in to comment

You need to be a member in order to leave a comment

Create an account

Sign up for a new account in our community. It's easy!

Register a new account

Sign in

Already have an account? Sign in here.

Sign In Now
 Share

  • Recently Browsing   0 members

    • No registered users viewing this page.
×
×
  • Create New...