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Microsoft has been talking to GitHub about possible acquisition
Yiannis
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Re: Microsoft has been talking to GitHub about possible acquisition
I’ve been wondering how to handle Github in my self-audit, and especially in relation to CSF repos, but this is the push/wakeup I needed. Those repos are coming down, because if it’s not Microsoft now, it will probably be another tech giant later. The cat’s out of the bag.
People in Masto are having fun with this.
“Microsoft Github” has a very nice ring to it. They will of course make a custom client, with many additional features and extensions, and integrate it with Office and Azure. Finally git will find the place where it belonged from the start. In the meantime I will continue using Mercurial and laughing out loud each time the command does exactly what I expect it to do. – deshupu
So if Microsoft bought Github I guess I would leave. There’s no way I’d want to be dependent upon or associated with a Microsoft owned company.
From their point of view it would be a good way to disrupt the FOSS community. A lot of things point to Github repos. Their presence would be highly divisive.
I already have been running Gogs for years, but just as a mirror. Also, I’d rather have a separate location for repos so that if my server is down or if my bandwidth is saturated then repos would still be available. – Mottram
FLOSS community:
> hey let’s put all our eggs in this one GitHub basket
> what could possibly go wrong
> GitHub is so convenientMicrosoft:
> [pic of Mr Burns rubbing his spindly hands and saying ‘Excellent!’]– dashie
Etc.
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Re: Microsoft has been talking to GitHub about possible acquisition
Bill Gates is saving the world from malaria. Steve Ballmer is trying to win an NBA championship with the Clippers. Most of the people who worked there who hated open source have all retired. It does have some legacy OS products that it is still supporting but that is a shrinking part of their revenue.
At the college where I work, when I got there in 2013, they gave me a shiny barely-used desktop running Windows XP. In 2014, when that became an unsupported product, I got an upgrade to Windows 7. In 2020, when that becomes unsupported, I expect we will get upgraded to Windows 10. We could almost operate with Windows except that the circulation software we use is still is still based on Win32.
Microsoft is a Services Company. They bought Skype because they thought it could mesh with their business. They bought LinkedIn because they thought it could mesh with their business. They bought Xamarin because they thought it could mesh with their business.
If they buy Github, it will be because they think it can mesh with their business.
p.s. If I were a commercial customer of GitHub who used it to store proprietary software in private depositories, I would definitely move somewhere else.
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Re: Microsoft has been talking to GitHub about possible acquisition
colak wrote #312251:
Could be worse – imagine Gaagle buying Github. Tracking everyone of your keystrokes on GH.
That said, and even though the 2018 edition of Microsoft is not the monster of Balmer and Gates, what is it that all those libertarians love in centralism?
Where is that emoji for a solar powered submarine when you need it ?
Sand space – admin theme for Textpattern
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Re: Microsoft has been talking to GitHub about possible acquisition
phiw13 wrote #312269:
what is it that all those libertarians love in centralism?
I don’t know but does moving from Github to GitLab qualify?
But I guess we should be glad that Google shutdown Google Code in 2016.
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Re: Microsoft has been talking to GitHub about possible acquisition
The plot thickens!
Microsoft Corp. has agreed to acquire GitHub Inc., the code repository company popular with many software developers, and could announce the deal as soon as Monday, according to people familiar with the matter. – Microsoft Is Said to Have Agreed to Acquire Coding Site GitHub
GitHub reminds me of YouTube a decade ago – popular and revenue-generating, but not enough to cover the costs. It makes sense that someone would buy them and of the Big Five (Google, Apple, Amazon, Facebook, and Microsoft) the latter is the most obvious choice.
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Re: Microsoft has been talking to GitHub about possible acquisition
This could be fine.
GitHub have lost millions of dollars over a period of years so their future was in no way guaranteed, now it kind of is. As long as Microsoft don’t make the same mistakes they made with Skype (which I’m sure they’ve learnt lessons from) then it’s business as usual. If not, well, there are alternatives such as Bitbucket or Gitlab and moving a git repository is relatively trivial.
I’m generally a Microsoft-hater from the past, but can’t deny Microsoft Visual Studio is a really nice IDE, and the company seems to be a lot more progressive these days.
It’ll be interesting to see if anything changes for Atom IDE development if the acquisition goes ahead, since it competes for marketshare somewhat with VS. You could probably gauge any future MS plans by what happens there.
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Re: Microsoft has been talking to GitHub about possible acquisition
Gitlab looks better as a knee-jerk reaction to the news, but it’s still centralized, still able to fall down the same path as any centralized platform needing money.
In any case, throwing this pallet on the fire. Nothing you don’t already know at this point…
What is wrong with Microsoft buying GitHub?
And again, some people remember the old MS and just won’t have anything to do with supposed ‘we’re better now’.
I don’t know what the answer is, and I speak only for my own use of GitHub, not anyone else’s. I’ll keep my account for a while, as I like to contribute to Txp docs when I can, but I won’t be using GH for any personal repos at this point. Those are coming down.
Pretty sure I’ll be getting MS spam at some point.
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Re: Microsoft has been talking to GitHub about possible acquisition
Federated initiatives, which the free software types are pushing.
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Re: Microsoft has been talking to GitHub about possible acquisition
There are options if we really care about this deeply and GitHub turns into a sack of crap under Microsoft’s regime. For example, hosting our own git repos. Given the size of our community, we may have the bandwidth to do that. Won’t get us the same visibility as being on a centralized platform of course.
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Re: Microsoft has been talking to GitHub about possible acquisition
It’s official.
Microsoft to acquire GitHub for $7.5 billion
If Microsoft proves to be a terrible steward, everyone can leave. But there is no reason to panic just yet.
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Re: Microsoft has been talking to GitHub about possible acquisition
Bloke wrote #312312:
There are options if we really care about this deeply…
We don’t – until such time as we need to (which may never come). Centralized gives us visibility and, more importantly, a thriving community of coders to help us. If anyone remembers back to the dead silence of Google Code then they’ll appreciate us staying on GitHub.
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