Microsoft Closes Its $7.5 Billion Purchase of GitHub (techcrunch.com) 87
Microsoft has official closed its acquisition of GitHub, the Git-based code sharing and collaboration service with 31 million developers. "The Redmond, WA-based software behemoth first said it would acquire GitHub for $7.5 billion in stock in June of this year, and after the acquisition closed it would continue to run it as an independent platform and business," reports TechCrunch. From the report: The acquisition is yet another sign of how Microsoft has been doubling down on courting developers and presenting itself as a neutral partner to help them with their projects. That is because, despite its own very profitable proprietary software business, Microsoft also has a number of other businesses -- for example, Azure, which competes with AWS and Google Cloud -- that rely heavily on it being unbiased towards one platform or another. And GitHub, Microsoft hopes, will be another signal to the community of that position. In that regard, it will be an interesting credibility test for the companies. Nat Friedman, previously the CEO of Xamarin, will be the CEO of GitHub on Monday. He says the site will be run as an independent platform and business.
"We will always support developers in their choice of any language, license, tool, platform, or cloud," he writes, noting that there will be more tools to come. "We will continue to build tasteful, snappy, polished tools that developers love," he added.
"We will always support developers in their choice of any language, license, tool, platform, or cloud," he writes, noting that there will be more tools to come. "We will continue to build tasteful, snappy, polished tools that developers love," he added.
"tasteful, snappy, polished tools"? (Score:1)
What the FUCK is he talking about? Microsoft has been hellbent on making GARBAGE the last 15+ years...
Re: "tasteful, snappy, polished tools"? (Score:1)
Microsoft make some of the best development tools available nowadays. Visual Studio, SQL server/management studio etc. They have some annoying quirks granted, but they're better than alternatives.
Android Studio is very much on par with visual studio to be fair, but that's probably because it's basically resharper.
xcode is dire, as is the whole iOS development process thanks to the awful provisioning profile and app review process. Its storyboard designer is nice though.
Re: "tasteful, snappy, polished tools"? (Score:2)
For database, I've been using dbForge and Dezign for Databases. Vastly superior to Microsoft's offering and it's not limited to one database. True, you pay for the privilege. Also true, they are not open source. So? I'd rather have something that does the job than something that has a particular badge. I'm willing to pay for a working product.
I've not tried OmniDB yet,but it looks interesting. That is open source - BSD, which is perfectly good as a license. It looks much better than Microsoft's SQL Server e
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If you want a text editor, I'd recommend you check out Visual Studio Code. It's great. It is nothing like VS in any way, other than the name. I use it for everything but c# nowadays. It's quite popular with open source developers
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I'm still confused as to why anyone would use Visual Studio Code or Atom (both massive Electron apps) when SublimeText is available?
It's like Atom (a LOT like Atom, I think they're cloning it), but using much less disk and RAM, and with more polish. My instance is currently using a bit over 4MB of RAM (on Win10, no files open).
Fresh install of Atom, no files loaded... 285MB of RAM.
On-disk install size for Sublime is 26MB. Atom is 668MB. FOR A TEXT EDITOR.
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I'm still confused as to why anyone would use Visual Studio Code or Atom (both massive Electron apps) when SublimeText is available?
To save $80 per seat per major version, especially if the U.S. Dollar is expensive where you live.
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Seems fair.
We let people use whatever they prefer for their dev environment; I'd rather spend that $80 and use the CPU/RAM for compiling and debugging.
We're actually spread between a bunch of editors... Atom, VisualStudio Code, Sublime Text, Eclipse, vim, etc.
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Microsoft Visual Studio is probably the best there is - at least it doesn't show up variables as [unknown] because the compiler and debugger developers couldn't agree on a data format to indicate where variables optimized into registers were stored.
Visual Studio seems to be extending functionality into the Internet so it retrieves news articles related to C++ and coding. Perhaps they will extend it into searching for useful Github repositories and libraries.
Re: "tasteful, snappy, polished tools"? (Score:1)
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They also make Rider, a very compelling Visual Studio alternative. But my office gets volume pricing on msdn, so we stick with that
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Android Studio is very much on par with visual studio to be fair, but that's probably because it's basically resharper.
Android Studio is IntelliJ IDEA, not resharper, although both are provided by JetBrains.
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All code use and has comments will have to reflect well on the M$ brand and its party political policy direction.
Re: 7.5 billion fucks given (Score:1)
What is worth the 7.5 billion, clearly not the web interface nor the domain name. Is it advertisement opportunity, access to the email addresses to file lawsuits on patent infringement or the ability to morph the terms for their favor?
Re: 7.5 billion fucks given (Score:3)
It'll be the license, modified so that you give permission for Microsoft to use anything you've put on GitHub in a closed source product, regardless of any license you use, and to make Microsoft co-owners.
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Has any evidence of this planned TOS change been made public?
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You mean GNU?
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Maybe now Microsoft will start using decent version control and branching for developing their Windows product...
Re: "neutral partner" my arse (Score:2)
Why stop using SourceSafe now?
Besides, can they? SourceSafe suffers random database corruption. They might not be able to move off it.
Anyway, a more advanced source control system could include RCS and SCCS. The extra features of RCS might confuse Microsoft developers at first, but they'd manage. They'd never cope with Git, totally alien to their mindset.
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SourceSafe suffers random database corruption. They might not be able to move off it.
MS never used SourceSafe internally. They used an internal licensed fork of Perforce.
They'd never cope with Git, totally alien to their mindset.
They've been using git to manage Windows for over a year now, as well as many other projects, and they've contributed back some of the work they did to support extremely large repositories (~300GB). git support is even directly integrated into Visual Studio now.
Microsoft Electron (Score:5, Informative)
GitHub made an application framework called Electron that is essentially a copy of Chrome hardcoded to view one website. Applications built with Electron, such as Slack, Discord, and modern Skype, tend to be RAM hogs, well into the triple digit MB per application. On laptops with 4 GB or less RAM, the swap pressure caused by running more than one Electron application at once makes Emacs look like "Eight Megs And Constantly Smooth".
So I guess with the purchase of GitHub made official, we can officially refer to this as "Microsoft Electron".
Re:Microsoft Electron (Score:5, Informative)
Electron may be a resource hog, but with it Microsoft produced Visual Studio Code. It's free, available on Linux, and the first text editor that I have actually been able to use aside from Vim. Aside from Vim keybindings, it's just pure fun to use, and wouldn't exist on Linux without Electron.
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I think at the time, bring-your-own-browser lacked strong support for several things: 1. offline use, 2. allowing the user to drag an entire directory into a web application for things like multiple-file search and replace, 3. launching local build tools natively, and 4. running a secure web server locally without having to buy a domain name and keep it renewed.
Those of you not happy with this situation (Score:1)
Time to move on. (Score:1, Insightful)
Sorry Microsoft. You pissed all over the PC industry, acted malicious, subverted standards, wrote the least secure major OS on the market, tried to make the web be "Microsoft-Only", and have generally been a bad actor for decades. You set personal computing back a decade and half if not more.
Guess what? Git is DECENTRALIZED. That means you don't get to have lock-in just because you bought github.
Bye bye!
Re: Time to move on. (Score:2)
Microsoft today IS your father's Microsoft. They've changed only their slogans. They're still working to subvert and destroy open source.
Now ... (Score:3)
Comment removed (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Time will tell. (Score:5, Insightful)
I don't think so.
Even if this investment never reaches black, M$ will view it as a win.
This is about vertical integration, pure and simple.
Control not only the productions systems (read Azure), but also the development systems (read GitHub). CI/CD is starting to become a must-have feature among GitHub, GitLab, and others, which only further reinforces reliance on a particular system/structure
Build those walls, ensure you support the entire workflow process from start to finish, then close the gates.
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Re: Time will tell. (Score:2)
Check for a suspiciously humming blue box with a telephone cabinet on the front.
Or accept that most people know not to trust Microsoft. Either works.
Although if anyone here has seen such a box, please let me know. I promise, I am not The Master. Look into my eyes. I am not The Master.
Re: Time will tell. (Score:2)
Not as easy to answer as you might think.
He never directly made money off Linux, but did land at least one (possibly several) multi-million dollar per year jobs on the strength of Linux. The Transmeta shares I'll assume have historic value to a museum but not to Linus.
So he's a multi millionaire from Linux without making money from it.
It's less clear what the situation is with git. He may well have earned millions off speaking tours of businesses on the subject of proper attribution and decentralised archiv
Gitlab (Score:2, Informative)
Hello Gitlab
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Gitlab saw its all time high on project movement count the day Microsoft bought Github.
Embrace, check (Score:1, Interesting)
Extend, check ...
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No comments in any code that are not M$ approved.
Meet new boss. (Score:2)
In Capitalist West M$ becomes partner to intellectual property created by you.
Microsoft are evil (Score:1)
I do not use their software or platforms.
I'm now on gitlab.
Re: Branding (Score:2)
I've taken another look.
Same attitudes, same abuse towards rivals, same embrace extend extinguish policy, same buying out success stories to illegally leverage a monopoly in other markets, same buggy products.
Gates wasn't the one who ordered the ISO group bribed to certify their Office data format as a standard. Bribery is wrong, even when done by slightly less rich people.
Gates didn't violate antitrust law by bundling Edge with Windows 10.
Gates didn't buy out Mojang or dismantle the community there.
U.S. v. Microsoft (Score:2)
Gates didn't violate antitrust law by bundling Edge with Windows 10.
The only difference between that and the behavior that prompted U.S. v. Microsoft and BrowserChoice.eu is that Internet Explorer wasn't called Edge yet.
So, gitlab then? (Score:2, Interesting)
Let's just assume that Microsoft will follow their overwhelming modus operandi and screw this up.
See you all over at gitlab?
MS and skype went bad. And now? (Score:3)
I hope MS does right by linux users, but...I'm sceptical given
the skype experience.
Developers vs Users (Score:2)
I'd rather Microsoft supported software users rather than software developers.
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Now, if people would only publish a repo once the program was actually working and useful...
I'll assume "actually working and useful" means roughly the same as "minimum viable product" [wikipedia.org]. Is that what you meant? If so, I have trouble believing that you meant "don't back up the repository at all until the MVP is complete". Did you instead mean "pay Microsoft $84 per year to keep your backup private until the MVP is complete"?
NSA/Microsoft Github (Score:1)
I will never use
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