Microsoft Completes $7.5B Github Acquisition

AlphaAtlas

AlphaAtlas

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Today, Microsoft completed their acquisition of the Git hosting service Github. Microsoft payed a cool $7.5 Billion for the company, which they announced back in June. Github's co-founder and former CEO, Chris Wanstrath, is stepping down, and former Xamarin CEO Nat Friedman will start his job as head of the company today. Microsoft claims that Github will remain independent, and retain its current philosophy, but that isn't quelling everyone's fears. Back when the acquisition was announced, Gitlab experienced a massive traffic spike, as many developers feared the worst and decided to clone projects to alternative platforms.

GitHub will operate independently as a community, platform, and business. This means that GitHub will retain its developer-first values, distinctive spirit, and open extensibility. We will always support developers in their choice of any language, license, tool, platform, or cloud. GitHub will retain its product philosophy. We love GitHub because of the deep care and thoughtfulness that goes into every facet of the developer's experience. I understand and respect this, and know that we will continue to build tasteful, snappy, polished tools that developers love.
 
The Mad Atheist said:
"Microsoft claims that Github will remain independent, and retain its current philosophy"
Start the timer, place your bets, one who comes to the closest date MS will change it, wins.
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And if my grandmother had wheels shed be a wagon.

Damn I seem to be saying that too much lately....I have seen these acquisitions before. It starts out that way and slowly the changes come. First they will change some small benefit to bring it in line with corporate. Eventually its all gone.
 
One does not pay $7.5B for something to keep it as is. There's a catch. Just look at the other companies MS (or any big corporations) buys. It soon gets changed, and most of the time, not for the better for the users
 
the-one1 said:
One does not pay $7.5B for something to keep it as is. There's a catch. Just look at the other companies MS (or any big corporations) buys. It soon gets changed, and most of the time, not for the better for the users
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It gets easy to generalize things an not look at situations under their own unique set of circumstances. Microsoft's development tools and platforms are generally considered very good, a tool like GitHub fits perfectly with Microsoft's development portfolio. 7.5 billion is just the cost of doing business if you're serious about development tools across the spectrum, mobile, desktop, cloud, etc.
 
heatlesssun said:
It gets easy to generalize things an not look at situations under their own unique set of circumstances. Microsoft's development tools and platforms are generally considered very good, a tool like GitHub fits perfectly with Microsoft's development portfolio. 7.5 billion is just the cost of doing business if you're serious about development tools across the spectrum, mobile, desktop, cloud, etc.
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Unless they shut it down like they did their Nokia Acquisition.
 
By 2020 no one will even remember github, as during the first half of 2019 everyone abandoned the platform for someone that isn't microsoft offering the same product. That's a hell of a gamble that everyone will just suck it up and deal with whatever new ads & fees will be incorporated to recoup that cost.
 
Nokia never made any damn sense with their waffling support of a mobile OS. Even if they wanted to go all-in on mobile, they didn't need to buy a company for that; they had their own hardware division.

While there's no telling what might/will happen in the future, I'd say that Git should be fine for a while. You might start seeing ads for Visual Studio integration, or a plugin to merge Git with Teams, or stuff of that nature. I'd think that the basic functionality should stay the same though. Microsoft is increasingly becoming a services company; Git is a good framework to use to build value for their offerings. If it kicks subscriptions/purchases of the products that integrate it up in any noticeable fashion, it will pay for itself without requiring any further monetization/changes.
 
Yes, yes, they're doing this for us.............:eek:
heatlesssun said:
It gets easy to generalize things an not look at situations under their own unique set of circumstances. Microsoft's development tools and platforms are generally considered very good, a tool like GitHub fits perfectly with Microsoft's development portfolio. 7.5 billion is just the cost of doing business if you're serious about development tools across the spectrum, mobile, desktop, cloud, etc.
Click to expand...
 
bobdabilder said:
Yes, yes, they're doing this for us.............:eek:
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Never said that. Microsoft was already heavily dependent on GitHub before this acquisition. Either Microsoft was going to buy it or someone else like Google. Google owning the de facto source control system for Microsoft platforms, yeah, the 7.5 billion was just the cost of doing business.
 
ManofGod said:
Unless they shut it down like they did their Nokia Acquisition.
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They wont do that. Fact of the matter is GitHub is FAR superior to TFS in so many ways. They know that and have publicly admitted as much. When the .net platform source went public they made the choice to put all of that stuff in GitHub rather than TFS for a reason.
 
What will happen is that a license will quietly be added that says "All you Base Belongs to Us", and they own anything you post.

Most of their offerings include that "right to use your code".

If you use their stuff, you ARE their code repository/developer; you just don't get paid. :(
 
So... the good news: Noobs on Win10 Home can now get to GitHub - personally audit the next update, pull, compile and trash their system in one seamless transaction.

Microsoft: pushing the development envelope off the table - from transforming their base from customers into beta testers, from testy customers into clueless developers. This is how you democratize development. Well done, M$!

;-)
 
some of us saw this coming

github-750x400.png
 
The Mad Atheist said:
"Microsoft claims that Github will remain independent, and retain its current philosophy"
Start the timer, place your bets, one who comes to the closest date MS will change it, wins.
Click to expand...

Been there, done that; hope the Githubers got a good enough paycheck.
 
I assume Microsoft wanted a huge codebase to analyze.
 
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So, what's the appeal of GitHub exactly? Not trying to be obtuse. I really don't get it. Host you own code, damn it.
 
heatlesssun said:
It gets easy to generalize things an not look at situations under their own unique set of circumstances. Microsoft's development tools and platforms are generally considered very good, a tool like GitHub fits perfectly with Microsoft's development portfolio. 7.5 billion is just the cost of doing business if you're serious about development tools across the spectrum, mobile, desktop, cloud, etc.
Click to expand...
Well except they could have easily created their own Git hub instead of infiltrating the works of millions of independent developers.
 
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dgz said:
So, what's the appeal of GitHub exactly? Not trying to be obtuse. I really don't get it. Host you own code, damn it.
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I mean for a lot of people, it's like a large portfolio of what you worked on already. It's a huge open source repository that's actually indexed, and it's done pretty well...

The appeal probably lies somewhere in data mining, and then the usage of it is secondary. Or trying to acquire new talent before others.... probably via data mining? When they have access to all of the files, I guess they could perform some analysis that they couldn't otherwise. Tech companies seem to be hurting for talent that's actually willing to stick around (I wonder why though...).

That's about it though, I don't know why they'd bother otherwise.

B00nie said:
Well except they could have easily created their own Git hub instead of infiltrating the works of millions of independent developers.
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If their takeover gets too invasive, people will just move on anyway. Creating another Github isn't exactly hard for a community of developers, so it would literally be suicide for a platform owner to alienate them. Like that's generally why people don't screw with devs by doing underhanded stuff. Someone will find out. Then they'll call you out. Then they'll make their own, and your customers are gone, and you have a terrible reputation.

Even I could go and create my own given some time, if I cared enough.
 
B00nie said:
Well except they could have easily created their own Git hub instead of infiltrating the works of millions of independent developers.
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Except GitHub put itself up for sale, someone else, most likely Google, was going to buy it if Microsoft hadn't.
 
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Microsoft has to know that a lot of people don't like this. What do they think? Do they just not care? If only there were someone with credibility and integrity to talk to Microsoft's PR people and get their carefully crafted words. ;)
 
Poseur said:
Microsoft has to know that a lot of people don't like this.
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Which matters not if Google or someone else was going to buy GitHub anyway. Not sure why people don't seem to get that GitHub put itself up for sale.
 
heatlesssun said:
Which matters not if Google or someone else was going to buy GitHub anyway. Not sure why people don't seem to get that GitHub put itself up for sale.
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I still want an honest answer (I know) from Microsoft. Why do normal people mentally recoil when they hear that Microsoft is involved?
 
Poseur said:
I still want an honest answer (I know) from Microsoft. Why do normal people mentally recoil when they hear that Microsoft is involved?
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Because Microsoft is a $800 billion mega-corp and the vast majority of people don't recoil when Microsoft is involved?

To a person like me that's been using Microsoft products for 30 years, most of this shit is just nonsense. The way you describe "normal" people I should be like dead or something from using Microsoft tech for that long.
 
Poseur said:
Why do normal people mentally recoil when they hear that Microsoft is involved?
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EEE? AARD Code? Claiming Linux infringes on 200+ patents? Halloween documents? OOXML? That antitrust suit? The cute tricks they played trying to get people to upgrade to win10?
 
ChoGGi said:
EEE? AARD Code? Claiming Linux infringes on 200+ patents? Halloween documents? OOXML? That antitrust suit? The cute tricks they played trying to get people to upgrade to win10?
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So you'd say that you're a bit uh, new, to how corporations regard what they consider to be their interests?
 
Nah, if I spent 7.5B on acquiring a company I'd want to get my money's worth, The board is just doing what they feel is the best course of action for their interests.
 
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heatlesssun said:
Because Microsoft is a $800 billion mega-corp and the vast majority of people don't recoil when Microsoft is involved?

To a person like me that's been using Microsoft products for 30 years, most of this shit is just nonsense. The way you describe "normal" people I should be like dead or something from using Microsoft tech for that long.
Click to expand...
Most of you people eat Monsanto and GMO products for years, why should anyone care that it's destroying our heatlh?
 
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