Microsoft buys GitHub

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tepples
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Microsoft buys GitHub

Post by tepples »

The potentially distressing news: Microsoft plans to acquire GitHub for 7.5 billion USD.

The reassuring news: Despite there being more "Satan" in the name under Satya Nadella than under Steve Ballmer, there's been less "Satan" in Microsoft's attitude toward free software. (Windows 10 telemetry potentially being bait for fishing expeditions aside.)
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Fisher
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Re: Microsoft buys GitHub

Post by Fisher »

Hope it don't happen the same thing as with Nokia!!
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koitsu
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Re: Microsoft buys GitHub

Post by koitsu »

Expect the service to become trash in about 5 years.
Rahsennor
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Re: Microsoft buys GitHub

Post by Rahsennor »

Not this shit again.
Erockbrox
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Re: Microsoft buys GitHub

Post by Erockbrox »

It seems like when companies are big they just like to buy other companies to get bigger.

Kind of like gravity. The more mass you have the more you grow because you attract more mass.

So... I've concluded that mass = $$$
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Sumez
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Re: Microsoft buys GitHub

Post by Sumez »

koitsu wrote:Expect the service to become trash in about 5 years.
Honestly, I can't think of anyone better at handling this service than Microsoft. They have both the skill, the means, and the experience. The "worst" thing that can happen is assimilating it into a superior service.
MS themselves switched to Git years ago despite having their own source control (TFVC), and have been using GitHub for most of their open source projects, despite having provided CodePlex for others. Expect most developers inside Microsoft to be big proponents of GitHub with a genuine interest to see it remain a functional platform.
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koitsu
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Re: Microsoft buys GitHub

Post by koitsu »

You obviously have never worked at Microsoft, for Microsoft, or been acquired by Microsoft. I have experienced all of those on separate occasions. I thought of writing up a explanation, but then I realised anything I wrote would very easily be tracked back to me, so I've decided not to. It's not worth the risk. My 5-year estimate is NOT a magic number, it's based on several experiences. I will add here that working *for* them (as an FTE) was actually fine, but what they do to companies they buy is generally negative.

You probably aren't aware of this. Note that that was a little over a year ago.

The failure of Codeplex should be making you look upon the GitHub acquisition with a raised eyebrow; amazing it isn't.

People don't just use GitHub as "just an online git repo" -- person can run one of those themselves (git init isn't hard, throw in some horrible HostGator web hosting and bam, you've got yourself an online git repo) -- they use for it's UI, its Issues (bug/feature tracker), source code commentary, pull request methodology, and tons of other stuff. I use it both personally and professionally, but this current ordeal has most companies who rely on GH starting to look at alternatives, including designing/running their own internally. It's not going over particularly well.

Remember what happened with Sourceforge for a couple years, after being bought out? Look for DevShare if you aren't familiar.

Microsoft does not have a generally positive track record when it comes to running and offering mostly-free public online services.

Microsoft is not buying GitHub "because it's what their programmers/engineers use". They're buying it because it has something they want to own and take over, no matter what the ramifications. Back in the 90s, with ST:TNG and all, people drew an analogy between them and the Borg. It's actually truer than people think, but it happens at a much slower pace than that of the fictional race.

What people also overlook (I have no idea *how* someone can overlook this) is the fact that employees who have been with the bought company get worn out due to the new red tape and politics, and leave -- so suddenly you have good engineers who know how to manage/maintain something (probably helped architect/design it) departing, and all their knowledge goes with them (no amount of documentation can replace that of human experience).

My comment stands. Five years.
tepples
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Re: Microsoft buys GitHub

Post by tepples »

GitHub needed to be bought in order not to close, as no VC or IPO would put much faith in a company that was losing money. And Oracle would probably have been even worse. "Everyone complaining about Microsoft buying GitHub needs to offer a better solution" by Peter Bright makes the case that Microsoft was the least bad buyer at the time.
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Sumez
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Re: Microsoft buys GitHub

Post by Sumez »

koitsu wrote:You obviously have never worked at Microsoft, for Microsoft, or been acquired by Microsoft. I have experienced all of those on separate occasions. I thought of writing up a explanation, but then I realised anything I wrote would very easily be tracked back to me, so I've decided not to. It's not worth the risk. My 5-year estimate is NOT a magic number, it's based on several experiences. I will add here that working *for* them (as an FTE) was actually fine, but what they do to companies they buy is generally negative.
Oh i wasn't thinking about the company, but the service.
It might be cynical of me, but I really don't care about the company GitHub. As Tepples already pointed out, GitHub were selling their company, it wasn't Microsoft violently taking it over, and my comment stands - I can't think of any better alternative.

I don't know a lot about CodePlex, but I'm under the impression that it "failed" because Microsoft is making a vastly better project with VSTS. There are already a ton of great alternatives to GitHub out there though, so it's surprising to me that they were worth that much.
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gauauu
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Re: Microsoft buys GitHub

Post by gauauu »

tepples wrote: The reassuring news: Despite there being more "Satan" in the name under Satya Nadella than under Steve Ballmer, there's been less "Satan" in Microsoft's attitude toward free software.
My concern is less the short term (in this case, agreeing with Koitsu really) -- the current MS is smart enough not to immediately break it and completely screw things up. But I expect them to gradually do annoying things (force everyone to change their github accounts to microsoft accounts like they did with skype?). And then in 10 years when MS gets a new CEO, shifts strategies, and isn't playing friendly with OSS anymore, things are going to get ugly.

Really, though, I don't care. I've felt for years that GitHub has way too big of an influence, and that the whole OSS ecosystem would be healthier if it wasn't so attached to a single company. If this inspires people to disperse to alternatives, that sounds good to me.
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koitsu
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Re: Microsoft buys GitHub

Post by koitsu »

tepples wrote:GitHub needed to be bought in order not to close, as no VC or IPO would put much faith in a company that was losing money. And Oracle would probably have been even worse. "Everyone complaining about Microsoft buying GitHub needs to offer a better solution" by Peter Bright makes the case that Microsoft was the least bad buyer at the time.
As someone who lives in Silicon Valley (GitHub is in San Francisco), and who is a strong proponent of doing something about the economic disparity in the region, the most telling part of that article (for me) is this:
Leaked financials from 2016 painted a picture of a company burning cash at a prodigious rate, with salary and benefits alone rivalling revenue.
In short: GitHub didn't need to be bought. Instead, it sounds like their CFO was doing the standard tech bubble bullshit thing of not being reasonable-yet-frugal with available funding. I have said this so many times (not so much on nesdev, but to local peers of mine): the sooner exorbitant wages and "perks" end in this region, the better off everything will be. (I'm fine with good benefits, I'm strongly against exorbitant and completely unnecessary salaries).

All of this just pisses me off even more. It means the situation could have been avoided.
Maslowski
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Re: Microsoft buys GitHub

Post by Maslowski »

That's it, man. The salaries of the hire ups in the IT industry are ridiculous. It's a sure way of ruining a company and coming to a point when selling it is the only option.
jmorgan1993
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Re: Microsoft buys GitHub

Post by jmorgan1993 »

I am afraid that Github will have the same fate as Nokia, but hopefully not.
tepples
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Re: Microsoft buys GitHub

Post by tepples »

The Electron framework, first developed by GitHub for the Atom text editor, allows writing a native desktop application in JavaScript, using the HTML DOM as a GUI framework. It does this by bundling Chromium, the result of removing all proprietary parts from the Google Chrome web browser. So in effect, an application built with Electron feels like downloading and running a separate copy of Chrome. If you install several applications built with Electron, they'll all occupy space on your device's SSD, and they won't share any of their RAM with other applications the way Chrome and Firefox processes share some of their memory across tabs.

Popular applications built with Chrome include Atom, Visual Studio Code, Slack, Discord, and recent versions of Skype. Electron is much heavier than the toolkit used for HexChat and Pidgin,[1] and I once measured Discord and Skype at roughly 365 MB.[2] Each. And no, not all compact laptops can be upgraded to 8 GB of RAM to accommodate this bloat, especially given the upward trend in DRAM prices through all of 2017.

So at least this acquisition lets me give a nickname to this framework that befits its bloat: Microsoft Electron.


[1] In a separate topic, I could explain for the benefit of IRC diehards why people switch from IRC to Slack, Discord, and Skype in the first place.

[2] Calculating the size in RAM of a multiprocess application such as Chromium is tricky because the processes share memory. You need to add the resident size of the master process to the unique size of the child processes.
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gauauu
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Re: Microsoft buys GitHub

Post by gauauu »

tepples wrote: Electron is much heavier than the toolkit used for HexChat and Pidgin,[1] and I once measured Discord and Skype at roughly 365 MB.[2] Each. And no, not all compact laptops can be upgraded to 8 GB of RAM to accommodate this bloat, especially given the upward trend in DRAM prices through all of 2017.

So at least this acquisition lets me give a nickname to this framework that befits its bloat: Microsoft Electron.
Recently at work, my Slack client was using 100% of a cpu core while sitting idle. I contacted the slack team about it, and they said that was to be expected at times, given the technology stack they used. Bloat is absolutely right.
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