Microsoft + GitHub
- Paul Thurrott
- Jun 04, 2018
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73
It’s official: Microsoft has agreed to acquire GitHub. And for a staggering sum of $7.5 billion.
“Microsoft is a developer-first company, and by joining forces with GitHub we strengthen our commitment to developer freedom, openness, and innovation,” Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella said in a prepared statement. “We recognize the community responsibility we take on with this agreement and will do our best work to empower every developer to build, innovate and solve the world’s most pressing challenges.”
GitHub is described as the world’s leading software development platform, and it currently served over 28 million developers worldwide. But why would Microsoft spend such a heady sum for what is essentially plumbing?
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Simple: In this age of competing cloud and mobile platforms, many of which it does not control, Microsoft needs to get its superior software development tools and services in front of more developers. GitHub users can, of course, continue to use whatever tools they prefer. But Visual Studio, Visual Studio Code, and other Microsoft developer offerings will now be tailored to work natively with the service.
As part of the deal, Microsoft’s Nat Friedman, a Xamarin co-founder, will take over as GitHub CEO. And GitHub’s outgoing CEO, Chris Wanstrath, will become a Microsoft technical fellow and report to Scott Guthrie. GitHub will become part of Microsoft’s Intelligent Cloud business segment once the acquisition is complete.
News of Microsoft’s acquisition of GitHub first leaked last week.
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Conversation 73 comments
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dontbe evil
<p><br>good job, hopefully nutella will not shutdown it like Kinect, windows mobile, lumias, groove…</p><p><br></p><p><br></p>
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Lateef Alabi-Oki
<p>Oh well. Guess I'm moving to GitLab. And no 3 years of Microsoft dabbling in FLOSS does not mean we forget the 20 years of terror they inflicted against the same community. </p><p><br></p><p>I'm glad Microsoft found Jesus. And I think they can be forgiven for the atrocities they brought upon the FLOSS community for decades. But that doesn't mean we forget the core of who they were, and possibly still are. </p><p><br></p><p><span style="color: rgb(0, 0, 0);">The open source community now needs a truly completely open alternative for GitHub. This is where Google can and should help.</span></p><p><br></p><p>I hope Google buys GitLab and centers open source, PWA, GCP, and Android development around it. GitLab says they'll be moving their infrastructure from Azure to GCP anyways. So that's a good start.</p><p><br></p><p>Most open source projects have stated they'll be moving away from GitHub.</p><p><br></p><p><br></p>
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Lateef Alabi-Oki
<blockquote><a href="#280887"><em>In reply to jrickel96:</em></a></blockquote><p><br></p><p>That's funny. Because last I checked there were still no alternatives to Google's database offerings like Spanner or Big Query.</p><p><br></p><p>And when it comes to container/VM technologies, Google is still unparalleled when it comes to deploying and scaling Kubernetes, the de facto open source standard for container development and deployment.</p><p><br></p><p>Hmmm…I wonder why. Oh that's right, they fucking created it. So much for your baseless theories. </p>
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skane2600
<blockquote><a href="#280946"><em>In reply to jrickel96:</em></a></blockquote><p>I don't know if your predictions will come to pass, but I think a lot of Google's use of open source was done with the attitude like "We could develop our own OS that was just as useful on the web as Linux, but why bother when Linux is available now and doesn't require us to pay a license fee". In other words, Google could have been just about as sucessful without open source as it is with it – they would have just had to spend a little more time and money to get there.</p>
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Lateef Alabi-Oki
<blockquote><a href="#281056"><em>In reply to jrickel96:</em></a></blockquote><p><br></p><p><span style="background-color: rgb(250, 250, 250); color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.87);">I'd like to have whatever you're smoking.</span></p><p><br></p><p><span style="background-color: rgb(250, 250, 250); color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.87);">The self-driving industry alone is a trillion dollar business.</span></p><p><br></p><p><span style="background-color: rgb(250, 250, 250); color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.87);">I'll give you a minute to let that sink in.</span></p><p><br></p><p><span style="background-color: rgb(250, 250, 250); color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.87);">Guess who's at least 10 years ahead of the pack? That would be Google's sibling company, Waymo.</span></p><p><br></p><p><span style="background-color: rgb(250, 250, 250); color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.87);">Google, and by proxy Alphabet, hasn't even begun to monetize 75% of their potential revenue generating products and services. Primarily, because they don't fucking need to.</span></p><p><br></p><p><span style="background-color: rgb(250, 250, 250); color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.87);">Google practically owns the Web. They own Mobile. They own AI. They own Cloud Services. They have the best cloud platform infrastructure. They're the most divested major tech company among the big 5. </span></p><p><br></p><p><span style="background-color: rgb(250, 250, 250); color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.87);">And they have barely even attempted to flex the muscle as far as being desperate to monetize countless of their innovations. "Why?", you ask. Because Larry and Sergey never gave a shit about shareholders. Their focus has always been talent and tech. The fact they make billions from having the best Ad Tech on the web is just a side bonus.</span></p><p><br></p><p><span style="background-color: rgb(250, 250, 250); color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.87);">So, tell me. How do you manage to convince yourself that this company is on the brink of its demise?</span></p><p><br></p><p><span style="background-color: rgb(250, 250, 250); color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.87);">As I've said numerous times, the GDPR only consolidated Google's and Facebook's powers and effectively made them gatekeepers. The people who are going to suffer from GDPR are small companies and every other tech company don't have the same data gathering capabilities and resources that Google has. </span></p><p><br></p><p><span style="background-color: rgb(250, 250, 250); color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.87);">Google was more prepared for GDPR than anyone. They were so prepared for GDPR that Google already implemented the details of the law more than 5 years ago and barely needed a tweak to fit the EU's proposal. </span></p><p><br></p><p><span style="background-color: rgb(250, 250, 250); color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.87);">Meanwhile, everyone else is still scrambling to make sense of the law. Many don't have the resources to implement it. And new competitors to Google are effectively locked out. </span></p><p><br></p><p>Your theories about Google's demise are fantastically amusing, but also completely misguided.</p>
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skane2600
<blockquote><a href="#281152"><em>In reply to mystilleef:</em></a></blockquote><p>A "trillion dollar business" requires a trillion dollars of revenue. Investor money is not revenue, Let's at least wait until these self-driving companies actually have a product for sale before we pretend to know how big their businesses are. The regulatory and liability impact hasn't even begun to be examined.</p>
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Lateef Alabi-Oki
<blockquote><a href="#280946"><em>In reply to jrickel96:</em></a></blockquote><p><br></p><p><span style="background-color: rgb(250, 250, 250); color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.87);">Anecdotes don't equate to facts.</span></p><p><br></p><p><span style="background-color: rgb(250, 250, 250); color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.87);">An informed person would compare Cosmos and Dynamo to Google Cloud Datastore and Google Cloud Bigtable, not Firestore. You don't seem informed as to the use-cases of these databases.</span></p><p><br></p><p><span style="background-color: rgb(250, 250, 250); color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.87);">Additionally, comparing RDS to Spanner is hopelessly laughable. The informed comparison would be to Google Cloud SQL. Neither of which have the global lock-free scalability and consistency of Spanner.</span></p><p><br></p><p><span style="background-color: rgb(250, 250, 250); color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.87);">The argument that somehow Kubernetes fairs better on Azure or AWS is absurd when neither is of them have the fully featured granular capabilities of GKE on GCP.</span></p><p><br></p><p><span style="background-color: rgb(250, 250, 250); color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.87);">How can Google be worse with Kubernetes when they created it? That's the dumbest shit I've heard all year. No other Cloud platform is as optimized for Kubernetes as GCP. You're beyond help if you believe anything else. </span></p><p><br></p><p><span style="background-color: rgb(250, 250, 250); color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.87);">Guess why GitLab is switching from Azure to GCP? According to their CEO, Azure's lacklustre Kubernetes support and performance.</span></p><p><br></p><p><span style="background-color: rgb(250, 250, 250); color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.87);">As far as privacy and security go, the last time I did an audit, around 6 months ago, GCP was the only cloud platform that provided end to end encryption in transit and at rest, and that was also completely HIPAA compliant. </span></p><p><br></p><p><span style="background-color: rgb(250, 250, 250); color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.87);">I did a quick check, admittedly not exhaustive, a few minutes ago, and this has not changed. This makes GCP the most private and secure cloud platform available among the top 3 vendors. So, once again, your privacy myths are not grounded in reality.</span></p><p><br></p><p><span style="background-color: rgb(250, 250, 250); color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.87);">I'm not worried about GitLab getting sold. I clearly stated I wanted Google to buy them. I just don't want corporations, with a history of decades terrorizing FLOSS, hijacking hard earned labor of open source projects for their own narrow minded gain. </span></p><p><br></p><p><span style="background-color: rgb(250, 250, 250); color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.87);">When Microsoft had relevance, power and influence they showed us how evil they could be. This is not a myth or old wives tale. This is factual history. The FLOSS community witnessed first hand this terror for over 20 years. </span></p><p><br></p><p><span style="background-color: rgb(250, 250, 250); color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.87);">The FLOSS community was referred to as a "cancer" or "virus" that needed to be eradicated. And Microsoft embarked on a 2 decade-long agenda to accomplish that goal at every conceivable level. They're still patent-trolling the Android community to this very day.</span></p><p><br></p><p><span style="background-color: rgb(250, 250, 250); color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.87);">Thank goodness, they failed!</span></p><p><br></p><p><span style="background-color: rgb(250, 250, 250); color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.87);">So, forgive me, if I'm not buying the whole Microsoft has changed narrative. </span></p><p><br></p><p><span style="background-color: rgb(250, 250, 250); color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.87);">They've changed only because if they didn't, they'd die like all the other anti-open proprietary-hogging, license-leeching, patent-trolling companies before them. What happens when they become influential, relevant, and powerful again? </span></p><p><br></p><p><span style="background-color: rgb(250, 250, 250); color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.87);">Old habits die hard and history tends to repeat itself.</span></p>
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Lateef Alabi-Oki
<blockquote><a href="#281386"><em>In reply to jrickel96:</em></a></blockquote><p><br></p><p><span style="background-color: rgb(250, 250, 250); color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.87);">You don't work on shit. </span></p><p><br></p><p><span style="background-color: rgb(250, 250, 250); color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.87);">If you don't know how to properly compare and contrast the different types of databases among cloud platform providers, then you have no credibility.</span></p><p><br></p><p class="ql-align-justify"><span style="background-color: rgb(250, 250, 250); color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.87);">>>> You see, I have to oversee millions of dollars of development based on cloud </span></p><p class="ql-align-justify"><span style="background-color: rgb(250, 250, 250); color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.87);">>>> infrastructure and Google is </span>no where<span style="background-color: rgb(250, 250, 250); color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.87);"> near as strong as other offerings.</span></p><p><br></p><p><span style="background-color: rgb(250, 250, 250); color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.87);">Ha! Sure!</span></p><p><br></p><p><span style="background-color: rgb(250, 250, 250); color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.87);">>>> Seeing as I have to make platform decisions based on cloud architecture and then sell</span></p><p><span style="background-color: rgb(250, 250, 250); color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.87);">>>> that to investors and clients,</span></p><p><br></p><p><span style="background-color: rgb(250, 250, 250); color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.87);">So, I've been arguing with a sales rep all this time. Thanks for wasting my time.</span></p><p><br></p><p><span style="background-color: rgb(250, 250, 250); color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.87);">>>> When I get 1500+ logged in simultaneously, the Google DBs get wonky.</span></p><p><br></p><p><span style="background-color: rgb(250, 250, 250); color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.87);">Yes, the hundreds of millions of active user sessions on Google services, and the billions of transactions per second that Google transacts daily, only happen because Google services run on Azure.</span></p><p><br></p><p><span style="background-color: rgb(250, 250, 250); color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.87);">No way in hell GCP could handle millions of users simultaneously and billions of transactions per second on a daily basis.</span></p><p><br></p><p><span style="background-color: rgb(250, 250, 250); color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.87);">As a matter of fact, word on the street is that the only reason YouTube works is that less than 1500 Google user sessions are active simultaneously. Otherwise, "the Google DBs" will get "wonky".</span></p><p><br></p><p><span style="background-color: rgb(250, 250, 250); color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.87);">Fuck outta here!</span></p><p><br></p><p><span style="background-color: rgb(250, 250, 250); color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.87);">I'm surprised anyone let you near the GCP console.</span></p><p><br></p><p><span style="background-color: rgb(250, 250, 250); color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.87);">Have a good day!</span></p>
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skane2600
<blockquote><a href="#280881"><em>In reply to mystilleef:</em></a></blockquote><p>Microsoft unfortunately reacted defensively as open source began to become mainstream with RMS and supporters stating that proprietary software was evil. So there was bad blood on both sides. Perhaps if FLOSS supporters had been less political in the early days, it might have gained support faster. I think it's a gross exaggeration to say that MS was responsible for any "atrocities" against FLOSS.</p>
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Lateef Alabi-Oki
<blockquote><a href="#281017"><em>In reply to skane2600:</em></a></blockquote><p><br></p><p><span style="background-color: rgb(250, 250, 250); color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.87);">It is not an exaggeration in the least bit. </span></p><p><br></p><p><span style="background-color: rgb(250, 250, 250); color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.87);">They harassed, threatened, sued, patent-trolled, discredited, and orchestrated elaborate campaigns, especially indirect lawsuits, against the FLOSS community and businesses that used open source software. </span></p><p><br></p><p><span style="background-color: rgb(250, 250, 250); color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.87);">I lived through it all. It's convenient now that FLOSS has won, they now love it. Yeah, right.</span></p>
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skane2600
<blockquote><a href="#281156"><em>In reply to mystilleef:</em></a></blockquote><p>Just to select one accusation you make, which businesses who used open source software were subjected to one of the negative terms you listed?</p>
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Lateef Alabi-Oki
<blockquote><a href="#281462"><em>In reply to skane2600:</em></a></blockquote><p><br></p><p><span style="background-color: rgb(250, 250, 250); color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.87);">Google the following:</span></p><p><br></p><p><span style="background-color: rgb(250, 250, 250); color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.87);">- Halloween documents leak</span></p><p><br></p><p><span style="background-color: rgb(250, 250, 250); color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.87);">- Scroogled campaign</span></p><p><br></p><p><span style="background-color: rgb(250, 250, 250); color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.87);">- Microsoft SCO campaign</span></p><p><br></p><p><span style="background-color: rgb(250, 250, 250); color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.87);">- Microsoft Get The Facts campaign</span></p><p><br></p><p><span style="background-color: rgb(250, 250, 250); color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.87);">There are more, but you can do your research.</span></p><p><br></p><p><span style="background-color: rgb(250, 250, 250); color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.87);">About every major Linux vendor has been threatened or sued by Microsoft over Linux patents. They still patent-troll Android vendors to this very day. </span></p><p><br></p><p><span style="background-color: rgb(250, 250, 250); color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.87);">Their most brazen campaign came when they funded SCO to get the courts to conclude that they owned the copyrights to Unix. They'd then abuse those rights to claim copyright infringement against Unix/Linux vendors and exploit them in the process. SCO pursued legal action against IBM, Novell, and even Linux customers.</span></p><p><br></p><p><span style="background-color: rgb(250, 250, 250); color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.87);">Before Microsoft was busted by the EU, Windows OEMs were threatened if they sold computers running anything other than Windows. There were consequences if they didn't adhere. This effectively made Microsoft a monopoly. </span></p><p><br></p><p><span style="background-color: rgb(250, 250, 250); color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.87);">They've also done shit like introducing "secure boot" to prevent computers from being able to install Linux.</span></p><p><br></p><p><span style="background-color: rgb(250, 250, 250); color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.87);">They're the biggest patent trolls on the market, and almost all their attacks have been against vendors that use Linux or open source.</span></p><p><br></p><p><span style="background-color: rgb(250, 250, 250); color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.87);">There's a reason the FLOSS developers and community went out of their way to develop tools, frameworks, and whole operating environments around Microsoft products. </span></p><p><br></p><p><span style="background-color: rgb(250, 250, 250); color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.87);">It's a testament to their work, that today, you don't need Windows for any kind of relevant development (the only exception is Games). As a matter of fact, Windows only relevance lies in running legacy apps. </span></p><p><br></p><p><span style="background-color: rgb(250, 250, 250); color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.87);">It also the reason the FLOSS community embraced Google. We knew through the open Web Google would be Microsofts Achilles hill. Google also knew this. So they effectively and successfully leveraged the ethos of the open Web and FLOSS against a Microsoft.</span></p><p><br></p><p><span style="background-color: rgb(250, 250, 250); color: rgba(0, 0, 0, 0.87);">So there's a history lesson for you. </span></p>
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skane2600
<p>Since when could any VCS be considered a "development platform", let alone the "leading" one. How could one test if their program was "github" compatible? HaHa</p>
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skane2600
<blockquote><a href="#281043"><em>In reply to curtisspendlove:</em></a></blockquote><p>If I use Notepad to write source code as part of my "workflow" it hardly makes Notepad a development platform. Like Notepad, Github is a tool, not a platform.</p>