What does Microsoft expect to get from GitHub?

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Simple answer: developers. I think they’re going to be disappointed by the reaction. What do you think?
[See the full post at: What does Microsoft expect to get from GitHub?]

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An exodus to GitLab as per here:

https://www.bleepingcomputer.com/news/technology/gitlab-sees-huge-traffic-spike-after-news-of-microsoft-buying-github/

If debian is good enough for NASA...

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Just came to post this.
Plenty of people on /r saying they would move from GitHub to GitLab, and they expected others to do the same.

https://www.theverge.com/2018/6/4/17422788/microsoft-github-acquisition-official-deal
“When it comes to our commitment to open source, judge us by the actions we have taken in the recent past, our actions today, and in the future,” says Nadella, in an attempt to ease concerns around Microsoft’s acquisition.

The issue isn’t your commitment to anything; the issue is trust, and frankly, you have none in the eyes of any Windows environment user worth their salt especially over the last few years. If this had happened 5-10 years ago, there wouldn’t be so much trepidation. Nowadays though, people will absolutely distance themselves from this. The phrase “a broken clock is right 2 times a day” comes to mind. Just because you’ve opened up PowerShell and created VS Code does not excuse all the other practices you’ve been blatantly guilty of lately in the Windows environment. Privacy issues, botched updates, forced updates, forced upgrades, and countless other related issues. That’s not just going to be swept under the rug and forgotten. You need an olive tree, not just a couple of branches.

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Are MS are going to introduce Home/ Pro/ Enterprise access editions to GitHub..as per the W10 framework?

Neutered access with paid subscriptions..I hear the MS cash registers pinging..

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“When it comes to our commitment to open source, judge us by the actions we have taken in the recent past, our actions today, and in the future,” says Nadella

Don’t worry, buddy. We do….

And when this user shifts full time to open source, you won’t find any Ms code in it…

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There has always been a distrust of Microsoft, longer than 5-10 years ago. People that have open source projects on GitHub might have reacted the same way they have done now. Do you remember trying browse sites that blocked access from people who were using Internet Explorer approximately a little more than one decade ago? (If they had told people about why they did block IE and pointed out an alternative browser such action could have help their projects.)

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anonymous wrote:

Do you remember trying browse sites that blocked access from people who were using Internet Explorer approximately a little more than one decade ago?

No.  That happened?

I never used IE, even during the height of its dominance, except for performing Windows Updates in Windows XP, so I had not heard of this.  I went from Netscape Navigator during the Windows 3.1 days to Netscape Communicator 3.0 and 4.x, and from there to Mozilla 1.0 (now called Seamonkey), and from there to Firefox (once they settled on a name), which I used until FF Quantum, at which time I moved to Waterfox.  Always Netscape or a derivative, never IE.

I did run a website at the time that displayed a “Please don’t use IE” page and an essay about why I thought they shouldn’t be using it (written by yours truly, so it was probably a lot longer than it had to be), but I never went so far as to deny access to IE users.  That would have been antithetical to the original vision of the web, which was all about the viewer of the content having all of the choices.

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Elly

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Same here. I went from Netscape Navigator to Phoenix/Firebird/Firefox (and then back to NN) during the height of the MS antitrust suits. In all my computing years’, I don’t remember having any issues with sites refusing to load in browsers other than IE. (Other than recently with SharePoint, which is obviously built for IE, but thank goodness for the IETab addon.)

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Elly

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Yeah it was a thing. You are right that most sites would be polite, but some obscure die hard site owners would block access based on Internet Explorer’s agent string. I do wish that the screen captures had not been lost so I could provide proof.

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You need an olive tree, not just a couple of branches.

More like an olive grove/orchard.

-lehnerus2000

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anita.yk

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Why would Microsoft take on more responsibility, when it can’t even handle the current load. All this does is make the malware-virus we all know as Microsoft stronger. Bet they pull more people off of Windows and move them to Github. That’s going to make patching a whole lot better. Right ?

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The reaction is already pretty negative. Alternatives to Github are already commenting on the spike in traffic they’re getting, and the spike in repository imports.

My reaction to this is that I’m waiting for them to ruin Github (An amazing feat given how bad Github already is) like the did Skype. I rather they work on fixing the things they own know than buying up other assets and ruining those.

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like the did Skype

Turning Skype into the terrible incarnation it now exists in took some doing considering they had two excellent products (MSN Messenger and pre-MS skype) to work with.

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Elly

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Skype for Business is a good product. We use that at my job.

I’ve never used any other version of Skype.

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What? When they moved us from Lync (re-skinned MSN Messenger as far as I could tell) to Skype for Business everything just fell apart. Messages don’t send but say they did, history re-writes itself in the chat window, it randomly changes fonts for outgoing messages, I can send but not receive files, and it now puts a photo of my face over the top of desktop sharing. I know what I look like, I want to see the presentation!

I would call it a lot of things, but a “good product” is not one of them. Though maybe that is only by comparison to Lync, which was pretty decent.

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Skype for Business works flawlessly for us. We are spread out over a multi-state area, with some international offices. I do some user support via Skype for Business, mainly remote control of a user’s desktop. I have used various products for remote control, but nothing has been as easy and as bug-free for this purpose as Skype for Business, except for the previous program we used, Communicator (another Microsoft program).

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They will probably pick off at least a few developers, but they will pay dearly for them….7.5 Billion dearly. It would be interesting to see how their estimated mass exodus numbers compare to the real mass exodus numbers in the end.

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Microsoft will want a return on the investment. Monetize, monetize, monetize. The $7.5 billion has to create new business/revenue. They will go through their new toy chest with a machete. They will move the ‘service’ to Azure and start charging their standard cloud subscription fees. They will kill off all existing contracts and replace them with their own standard developer contracts, which most developers have always loathed.

The other contributing companies: Apple, Google, IBM, Red Hat and others – their projects will be moved unless Microsoft seizes them. I do not know if they can legally do that considering they are open source, but then again MS now owns Github so I assume they also now own the code. This stuff has to have an enormous value. I can not see them letting it go.

All MS acquisitions end up being poorly mismanaged. Even if they publicly say they are committed to open source and its purpose, I think they will have a different view of it behind the curtain. Trust is not something we associated with this company.

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Could they sell it for parts?

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By copyright law, MS does not own any third party code on GitHub. However, the lack of trust developers have for MS does not bode well for GitHub. Projects need to be accessible but it does not matter where the repository is sitting as long as one can find the URL. So there is no real reason for them to stay on GitHub as long as they can update the links to the new site and the new site offers the services they require. Plus, developers have the skills to do a migration, so that does not scare them.

 

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I am reminded of something that happened in an earlier time — Borland bought Ashton-Tate in order to get the dBase user base — they literally bet the farm to do so — only to see virtually all of those users abandon dBase for FoxBase, a program Microsoft bought and recristened as FoxPro. Borland came very close to going out of business because of this decision, while Microsoft took over that market.

It is therefore interesting to see Microsoft spend billions to buy GitHub, only to see huge numbers of users abandon GitHub.

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johnf, Karlston, RDRguy

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Maybe this is an opportunity for Borland to buy GitLab and return the favor!

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anita.yk

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[conspiracy theory]

MS have power and with power clever lawyers. Maybe, just maybe this aquisition was done a while ago and only made public today.  The element of surprise works in mysterious ways and in this instance, to the advantage of MS. So, my question is, could MS have bought Github with a legally binding clause NOT to disclose the purchase to the public until a certain date?

If so, perhaps MS have had github data for weeks/ months.

[end conspiracy theory] Ouch! that hurt..

If debian is good enough for NASA...

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HiFlyer

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I think with the going rate for a tech forum pegged at 7 billion, Woody is having a little lie down somewhere quiet.
UKBrianC

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SueW, HiFlyer, Karlston

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Just one question: How can MSFT be so stupid for so long and still making tons of money?
Answer: …. (open source, fill in the blank) ….

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The post created sometime ago about noticing a Microsoft developer’s account on Github seems to have been no real sign of change you and some of us thought it could be. I do not know the long term future as much the next person, but this may be like their old embrace, extend, extinguish routine.

Github’s possible future?…

When Sourceforge was acquired and nearly ruined by DICE Holdings, Inc (now DHI) very quick corrupt monetizing of open source software project installers, until Slashdot Media (now owned by BIZX) bought it back stopped the practice. Of course you could likely find developers of certain projects still have a distrust of Sourceforge because of that now tainted history. Even if Github survives and ever gets bought again user trust is so very difficult to rebuild.

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What does Microsoft expect to get from GitHub?

More than likely, to sneakily steal code from open-source developers, eg …
https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1002696910266773505.html (Thread by @jamiebuilds: “I think it’s time I publicly shared about how Microsoft stole my code and then spit on it. I’d been waiting for them to do something about i […]” 3 days ago)

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[sarcasm on] microsoft codescrapers, so that’s where the QA dept went, Github trolling [sarcasm off]

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jburk07, SueW

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Please excuse my ignorance, but what is GitHub.

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https://www.howtogeek.com/180167/htg-explains-what-is-github-and-what-do-geeks-use-it-for/

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I can not imagine Microsoft agreeing to keep all the GitHub standing agreements as part of the acquisition. GitHub offers a specific service for developers which is based on sharing. The companies involved with GitHub own the resulting software applications.

Microsoft wants to leverage their cloud services by offering some of these applications to their massive customer base – a possibly huge business opportunity for MS as well as the application owner. However, when the product becomes a service it is no longer a product. MS will be controlling the service as well as the product’s destiny. The owner may end up contractually bound to MS. I’d assume it would be costly to try to withdraw the product (for whatever reason) from the platform once it gets incorporated into MS customer services.

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Well, just another technology Microsoft is going to [ruin].

Microsoft can’t even fix Windows Update after years of trying this and that back and forth.. Even if Windows 1803 is already installed for a month by now, Windows Update won’t stop bothering to install ‘Feature update to Windows 10, version 1803’. It’s just ridiculous and even apes can do better.

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https://blogs.microsoft.com/blog/2018/06/04/microsoft-github-empowering-developers/ *sic*

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Short Expectation: $$$.  Long term: $$$.  I hope their business model is geared for the long haul, because the Short Expectation won’t happen overnight!  Many developers will probably sit back and see what happens, or MS  may end up with a bunch of schlock developers looking for a quick buck.  Good luck MS!

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So this is why Codeplex was left to die?  Makes sense.  I guess if they can’t maintain something themselves they’ll just buy another one.

Microsoft’s own Open Source commitment has been spotty at its very best.  They’ve only started to play ball because their own proprietary systems have started to collapse.  If I was on github I’d be leaving too, and it’s not due to privacy and datamining concerns (although there’s plenty of that).  It’s due to developer support which will rot away while they try to twist everyone into their direction before eventually dropping it in 10 years.

Think TechNet, Codeplex, Windows RT, Windows Phone, FoxBase, Nokia, Microsoft Games Division, Microsoft Live Marketplace, etc.

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What was the problem with FoxBase? Microsoft polished it up and renamed it FoxPro, and almost overnight acquired the entire dBase userbase. The acquisition of FoxBase was a brilliant and very successful move on Microsoft’s part.

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At a Linux forum, on 05 June 2018, mediclaser wrote …

Back in the 90’s, MS bought FoxPro…one of the best XBASE programming tools. MS improved a lot on it, and it became known as Visual FoxPro (VFP). It was the number one RAD tool for any size business. If you are a small to medium size business, it’s all you need for developing your apps. You don’t need to purchase a database server. And if you decide to migrate your data to a more powerful database like their own MS SQL, you could do it with very little code modification. Also, you don’t need to pay runtime license (or royalty) when you deploy or sell your apps.

But when M$ realized VFP was making it hard for them to sell their other products to smaller businesses, they killed it just like that…even though it was the number 1 product in that category.

What made it painful for me personally was VFP made me a “super” developer because of its very useful features. I could create a solution in a matter of minutes, which other developers using other tools would take weeks (if not months) to develop.

Also, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Visual_FoxPro

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Elly

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Perhaps Microsoft is trying to change their image.

And they could be hoping with this move to assert more control over software development in general, then find indirect ways to profit from that control. Indirect profit seems to be the way of the future, though I still don’t believe in it… There’s nothing wrong with good ol’ “pay for something that has value without hidden strings attached“.

I’m imagining at least some exodus of open source developers who don’t want their software hosted in Microsoft’s domain. Microsoft may want to change their image but they’re still disliked for many of the things they’ve actually done and are still doing.

Maybe all this will breathe new life into Subversion, which has been my preference over Git all along.

-Noel

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johnf

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Noel, GitHub is not the only game in town and as you point out there are other version control systems besides git. Git is popular. But what most developers want is solid system whether it is Git, Subversion, Mercurial, or something else. For an open source project, they want an online version control system but who the host is and what the system is relatively unimportant; pick one and move forward. For those using GitHub there are several alternatives that use Git so migrating will be fairly easy.

This may turn out to be Nadella’s answer to Nokia; a head scratcher of a purchase that will be written down to nothing in a few years. Also, 7.5 billion seems like a massive overvaluation of GitHub.

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Noel Carboni wrote:

Perhaps Microsoft is trying to change their image.

Their image is based on their behavior.

If they want to change their image, the means to that end should be self-evident.  It’s going to take more than a few “we love Linux” statements and other empty gestures here and there to make people forget what they’ve done– and are still doing.  At the very least, stop the abuse of your own customers before trying to persuade people that you’ve changed and that you are no longer abusive! People may have short memories, but they tend to remember things that happened… uh, right now.

If that’s what they’re up to, it’s reaching a “Baghdad Bob” level of farcicality.

 

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"we love Linux"

Quite frankly, this scares me a bit. I don’t like the idea of Microsoft putting their hands into the Linux pot. How much will they try to control via copyright and high-powered lawyers?

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I have to admit, my first reaction was a very naughty word, followed by immediately seeing if the main two viewer/helper apps for my favorite game had fled GitHub yet, because I know that’s what I personally would do if I was a dev with a repo there (although in these particular devs’ case, they may be too busy playing our current in-game event ;-D ). That said, considering how many major OSS projects use GitHub at least in some capacity, including Microsoft competitors like Mozilla, and considering Microsoft bad reputation in that sector, this honestly shows how insulated and isolated the decision makers at Microsoft truly are. Otherwise, the backlash as word got out about the sale and the dev exodus would have shown all parties involved that the sale is a bad idea.

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anita.yk, HiFlyer

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anonymous wrote:

Yeah it was a thing. You are right that most sites would be polite, but some obscure die hard site owners would block access based on Internet Explorer’s agent string. I do wish that the screen captures had not been lost so I could provide proof.

I remember that happening. I too went from Netscape to Mozilla Suite and then also Phoenix, Firebird, Firefox. I had problems with many sites especially banking.

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HiFlyer

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Market share.

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There has been some ink in the last few hours about this being the best solution for GitHub because any other buyer would have been a lot worse. It has to be understood that there was no competing offers for GitHub. Microsoft was the only company that made an offer to buy GitHub.

Those considered as possible buyers never showed any interest in buying GitHub.

The so-called contenders: the garlic garlands came out for Oracle and Disney (trust issues), Google is closed and suffers from acute kleptomania, Apple and IBM, though big in R+D (too inwardly focused) and Red Hat having the DNA but not likely to come up with $7.5 billion. Intel’s management style too toxic. Of course Microsoft have many of the same ‘qualities’ that all of these companies were disqualified for, but Microsoft turned out to be the best fit.

It really comes down to a desire to want to host this site, deep pockets and a business plan.

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Google already has code.google.com so probably would have been interested. Maybe MS wants to compete with Google in this area?

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I am surprised that Amazon did not show more interest in GitHub. I read that Google did show some interest not too long ago but the management at GitHub preferred Microsoft.

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There is a PWA concept floating in the Web. Apps basically working on each platform. Google already transferring their services to PWA. And then there’s MS Windows 10 Mobile that is lacking apps. And Edge that is supporting PWAs in the newest version. You’d think that with very little effort you could port EdgeHTML 17 to Windows 10 Mobile and give users and developers an opportunity to use and create apps for the platform and show that you care at least a bit about your loyal customers.

I asked Brandon LeBlanc on Twitter about this specifically. His answer: “Unfortunately there are no plans for this. Sorry.”

That’s MS approach towards developers in a nutshell.

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Since its acquisition of 86-DOS. which it rebranded and resold to IBM, Microsoft has been a marketing–or more accurately a re-marketing–company, not the technology company it likes to portray itself as. Marketing is it’s DNA, a destiny Microsoft has tried mightily to escape. As a marketing company, it has historically purchased the innovations of others and, after tweaking them to make them worse, resold them. In its latest reinvention of itself as a cloud-based-services company Microsoft wants to demonstrate–for marketing/branding purposes–that it has an application ecosystem like Apple’s. Thus GitHub with its built-in developer community that Microsoft wants to leverage. As developers have in Microsoft’s past reinventions and as they will in its future reinventions, some will fervently cleave unto the new Microsoft, some will jump aboard for the ride, and some will turn their backs. And like previous Microsoft reinventions, this one will coast along for a while on its own momentum, gradually lose steam (and revenue), and give way to a new reinvention.

Move along. Nothing to see here folks. At least nothing new.

GaryK

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Microsoft Buys GitHub: The Linux Foundation’s Reaction
By Jim Zemlin | June 7, 2018

 
This week Microsoft announced that it is purchasing GitHub for $7.5 billion in stock. I waited for a few days to write up my thoughts because this is something that deserves some thoughtful reflection. The bottom line: This is pretty good news for the world of Open Source and we should celebrate Microsoft’s smart move. But before we get to that, it’s worth noting that I have been working in this dynamic space for many years and the differing reactions to the announcement reminded me of a few things:

 
Read the full article here

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https://venturebeat.com/2016/11/16/microsoft-joins-the-linux-foundation-as-a-platinum-member/
.
https://itsfoss.com/linux-foundation-head-uses-macos/

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From the article, “Their (Microsoft’s) commitment to open source has been active for years.”

Does that mean they will open source Windows XP and Windows 7, so that the open source community can maintain these ‘old’ operating systems that Microsoft has or will soon abandon? I would be thrilled! At the same time, I’m not holding my breath…

Non-techy Win 10 Pro and Linux Mint experimenter

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Jim Zemlin: “Open source developers changed our world. Microsoft gets that, which is why they purchased GitHub. I for one am excited to see the improvements they’ll make and will be shocked if Nat were to screw it up (no pressure Nat!).”

Satya Nadella: “No one can possibly pressure me, nor can I possible screw up anything, Jim:   I am MS!”

 

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