Is Microsoft about to git-merge with GitHub? Rumors suggest: Yes

Microsoft has held talks with GitHub with a mind to potentially buy the popular source-code warehouse, folks closely familiar with the discussions have claimed. There have been recurring rumors going back to at least 2016 that the Windows giant is considering gobbling the San Francisco-based upstart, which hosts developers' …

[elDog]

the survey only listed Disney as a viable acquirer. How about AOL?

Really? I've stopped using linkedin since MS took it over and harvested all the info.

So now MS wants total control over OSS software, at least as stored on github?

Sometimes these behemoths don't know how polluting they are of the ecosystem.

Fortunately, until the internet stays open and alive we'll all have alternate ways to share information.

[Christian Berger]

Disney probably is more of an IT company than AOL

Disney has started looking into IT and investing into its research at least as early as the 1970s. Back then they cooperated with Xerox Parc on programming literacy projects.

Disney even produced their own computer systems.

[Wade Burchette]

Re: Disney probably is more of an IT company than AOL

The only company I think would be worse for Github than Microsoft would be Disney. These are the same greedy bastards who keep bribing ... er "lobbying" elected officials to increase copyright's length. The Big Mouse has become thoroughly evil.

[JLV]

Re: Disney probably is more of an IT company than AOL

+1

The Mouse, with Michael Eisner, was also the first company where a non-founding, employee-type, CEO breached the $100M/year remuneration barrier. Not that he lost much $$$$ when the company started under-performing later on - it took years to evict his sorry ass.

CEO and C-level pay and bonuses being a pox on the face of citizens, employees and, yes, shareholders, Disney has a lot to answer for in our context of ever greater rapaciousness, greed and public distrust - warranted or not - of people who manage companies and free markets.

[JohnFen]

Re: Disney probably is more of an IT company than AOL

Disney would be awful, but would they be worse than Microsoft? It seems like six of one, half dozen of the other to me.

[MacroRodent]

Re: the survey only listed Disney as a viable acquirer. How about AOL?

I wonder why the survey did not include Red Hat? As a company built around Linux, and a major contributor to it and other open source projects, Github would fit there.

[John Brown (no body)]

Re: the survey only listed Disney as a viable acquirer. How about AOL?

"I wonder why the survey did not include Red Hat? As a company built around Linux, and a major contributor to it and other open source projects, Github would fit there."

Yes, I was struggling with the list of optional alternatives to find a "least worst" choice and gave up and clicked submit without choosing. Surprisingly, that was acceptable tot poll software but it didn't show a None Of The Above result. I suspect None Of The Above would have won by a landslide had it been offered as a choice.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: the survey only listed Disney as a viable acquirer. How about AOL?

> I ... clicked submit without choosing.

Same here. None of the supplied answers is a reasonable fit for GitHub ownership.

[DCFusor]

Re: the survey only listed Disney as a viable acquirer. How about AOL?

Red Hat - the source of broken stuff they can charge to support, like systemd and pulseaudio?

No way...

[CrazyOldCatMan]

Re: the survey only listed Disney as a viable acquirer. How about AOL?

survey did not include Red Hat

Well - DedRat is starting to get a toxic reputation amongst the open-source crowd (systemd and all that) so it's a possibility that could well also spell the end of Github..

(I suspect that a Microsoft-owned Github would quickly find its usage diminishing very quickly indeed. Would you trust your confidential source code to a microsoft-owned company?)

[JohnFen]

Re: the survey only listed Disney as a viable acquirer. How about AOL?

I'm not sure which would be less pleasant -- Github being owned by Microsoft or by Red Hat.

[Anonymous Coward]

Avoid any products from the YCombinator mafia!

With hindsight: Avoid any products from startup started by the YCombinator mafia! Their president, Sam Altman, is a M$ trojan horse and Bilderberger.

Read the book "Chaos Monkeys: Obscene Fortune and Random Failure in Silicon Valley" about the YCombinator mafia and Sam Altman M$ connection.

https://www.amazon.com/Chaos-Monkeys-Obscene-Fortune-Failure/dp/0062458191/

Github, Docker, Reddit, Dropbox, AirBnb, Scribd, Heroku, WePay, Mixpanel, Stripe, PagerDuty, Humble Bundle, Coinbase, Zenefits, and many more!

Ycombinator imperium, avoid these companies: https://yclist.com

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: the survey only listed Disney as a viable acquirer. How about AOL?

Sometimes these behemoths don't know how polluting they are of the ecosystem.

Au contraire, they know that exactly. Why do you think they would otherwise do this?

The problem is that few people know enough of history to notice it repeating itself. Microsoft had a good run with SCO, but quickly discovered that something that overt would wake people up, so I reckon that this is where the process of subversion (apologies for the pun) started - it was exactly their history that made me wary of their later Linux "friendly" efforts. Google has been following the exact same playbook of subversion, coldly ignoring inconvenient laws and lying through their teeth, but they have at least been smarter in how they went about implementing - it's taken a long time for people to realise just how pervasive it is in what it does.

I reckon that, ultimately, Google will buy Microsoft to have full control. That, finally, will complete their Panopticon plans.

Back to Git, why wasn't there a "none of the above" option? Or maybe the FSF? No, wait, the latter wouldn't have enough money - but it could set up a Git replacement before the sale has completed..

[JLV]

Re: the survey only listed Disney as a viable acquirer. How about AOL?

>FSF

Kidding, right?

Out of all possible scenarios I would welcome those zealots least of all.

Github's license demographics are firmly in the permissive license camp. Nothing wrong w GPL per se, whatever rocks your boat. But, by its context, Github's management should emphatically NOT be biased towards a license.

Lesser issue, but still problematic, is OS/language bias, which IMHO means best avoiding Google, Apple, MS, Oracle.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: the survey only listed Disney as a viable acquirer. How about AOL?

Oh well, at least it isn't Google. The Borg would likely sell your data, fill it with adverts and discontinue important functions at short notice.

[CrazyOldCatMan]

Re: the survey only listed Disney as a viable acquirer. How about AOL?

at least it isn't Google. The Borg would likely sell your data, fill it with adverts and discontinue important functions at short notice

As would Google. In fact, MS & Google have a very similar mindset these days.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: the survey only listed Disney as a viable acquirer. How about AOL?

I chose Salesforce, because if Github can't have a decent corporate master, end it swiftly. Oracle works too. Or Microsoft, for that matter.

It's okay. Github was never great. First it was an unreliable Ruby on Rails site. Then they fixed it but turned it into yet another social network. Then it became a near-monopoly. RIP, Github.

I haven't really used it in a few years and was thinking about deleting my account entirely. Now I will.

[ROC]

Re: the survey only listed Disney as a viable acquirer. How about AOL?

So you're ok with Verizon owning Github through its AOL subsidiary? That's how it would be...

[Francis Boyle]

Re: the survey only listed Disney as a viable acquirer. How about AOL?

I chose Disney not because it was any better than any of the other choices but merely because it was mildly amusing (and I had run out of options). And no, not Red Hat. I don't need the option to insert systemd into my Arduino code.

[Sitaram Chamarty]

Re: the survey only listed Disney as a viable acquirer. How about AOL?

"until the internet stays open and alive"?

don't you mean "while"?

Are you sure you're a developer? :-)

[a_yank_lurker]

Slurp the Clueless

Wolfing done Github would cause a migration away from it as developers really distrust Slurp more so than the general public. Slurp's antics with non-support of standards, dropping developer tools, APIs, etc. makes their stewardship of Github rather problematic.

When they bought Linked, my activity has dwindled to nothing with some consideration to dropping it altogether.

[MacroRodent]

Re: Slurp the Clueless

Yes. Also the way Git itself works makes migration easier. As the article notes, there are similar competing services, ready to take in projects looking for another home.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: When they bought Linked

Hadn't heard until a few minutes ago. I'd thought it was entirely disposable since years ago, and IIRC it liked to give itself permission to send legit-looking invites to everyone in your address book if you gave it access to your email account. So I was a bit happy to have been already done caring and long gone, and a bit annoyed to get invites for a while longer from that guy I know who (probably) still thinks he's gonna pull off a coup w.r.t. unlimited free and/or wireless energy, after he "connects with" the right people-- who can and will "buy in". Those emails stopped eventually... don't know whether MS fixed it, or what. But I'm here to cheer you on while you consider.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Slurp the Clueless

> When they bought Linked, my activity has dwindled to nothing with some consideration to dropping it altogether.

Drop it all together. Just make sure to take a backup of your contacts data first, as you'll probably want to contact them sometime over the next few years.

Don't keep the account around though. Microsoft isn't using the data for your benefit.

[x 7]

Re: Slurp the Clueless

"Slurp the Clueless"

That sounds like the name of an old Viking chief

[oldcoder]

Re: Slurp the Clueless

Yea... that sounds like a Microsoft raider... not knowing what they are doing, and end up just pillaging and burning what they invaded.

[ROC]

Re: Slurp the Clueless

More like one of the Ango-Saxon "kings" who thought he could cut a deal with the Vikings... yeah, right!

[bombastic bob]

Are we being TROLLED?

Are we being TROLLED? I had to ask. Micro-shaft BUYING GITHUB is the _WORST_ possible "Embrace Extend Extinguish" nightmare I can think of.

[Ian Reissmann]

Re: Are we being TROLLED?

The "worst thing you can think of" ?

What about Boris for PM for starters ?

Ok MS/GH is not good, but if the coders of the world can't come up with a non MS alternative solution, we'd deserve all we got.

[Anonymous Coward]

All your open source code

are belong to Micro$oft.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: All your open source code

expect new FB-like T&C's which grant M$ rights to do anything they like, including Rape and Pillage, of any source code that they continue to be host.

[Voland's right hand]

Re: All your open source code

expect new FB-like

Before that - expect all new features and some old ones over time to work only in visual studio.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: All your open source code

M$FT buying Github.com is THE WORST CASE scenario.

Look at LinkedIn, Skype, Minecraft, Nokia, WebTV - M$$$ is the worst company, it makes products worse and they are dying a slow death as soon as they get bought.

If Github indeed sells to M$ it is a big blow for the free open source software community.

Open source software alternatives to GitHub:

the most lightweight and best performing is GOGS (golang application):

https://gogs.io/

And GitLab (though very slow, Ruby code, unstable SaaS, SaaS runs on Azure cloud, aka M$$$)

[Voland's right hand]

Re: All your open source code

M$$$ is the worst company, it makes products worse and they are dying a slow death as soon as they get bought.

Nothing specific to a Microsoft. It is the standard in large companies. In fact, MSFT is not the worst in here. By far.

This will continue being the case as long as M&A based "innovation" in the USA is more tax efficient than internal innovation and R&D. The bean-counters will ensure that.

[MacroRodent]

Re: All your open source code

> In fact, MSFT is not the worst in here. By far.

Yes, a certain company with a name that starts with an "O" comes to mind immediately.

[Pascal Monett]

Re: Look at LinkedIn, Skype, Minecraft, Nokia, WebTV ....

Uh, MineCraft is doing fine, you know. Don't ask me how, but I am an avid Minecrafter and my experience has not changed one whit.

Since MS bought MineCraft, the only real new thing was the introduction of Realms, which is entirely optional but I guess there are people who find it useful, so good for them. I don't know what exactly is happening on Realms, but there is quite some activity judging from the info panel on the game launcher.

Meanwhile, no microtransactions or advertisements have appeared, and no hint of that sort of thing on the horizon, so, from where I sit, MS is not, for once, doing bad with its acquisition.

Here's hoping that will continue.

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Look at LinkedIn, Skype, Minecraft, Nokia, WebTV ....

> MineCraft is doing fine(TM)

Original MineCraft Java client development stalled and console client development stalled.

They are only working on the mobile C++ client, that they ported to Win10 and are working on a console port right now.

All Mods and the big community is on Java client, yet it will never get the graphics improvements and new features - those are Win10 only. Even the Nintendo Switch console got a Minecraft version that was dropped only after 6 months, no new development, no new version - "wait for a new port, please buy it again, sincerely your slurping Micro-$haft"

[Anonymous Coward]

@AC

Regarding Java Minecraft

"All Mods and the big community is on Java client, yet it will never get the graphics improvements and new features - those are Win10 only."

So how do you explain the upcoming Project Aquatica?

Sorry, but you're talking bullshit. 1.13 gets the Java edition a completely overhauled (improved) command system, new blocks and mobs, new game designs (buried treasure, sunken ships, ocean ruins, and dolphins which can lead you to said ruins), improved world generation, new biomes, severely improved customization (create your own crafting & smelting recipes, functions, structures.. and add 'm all into your own datapack)...

It even enhanced graphics; full screen playing is handled a lot better these days.

Not just that:

* Game library updated to LWJGL 3.

* Optimized cloud rendering.

* Optimized fog rendering.

Or what about this, a planned feature:

* World generation will become data-driven, using json files, allowing for custom structures.[12]

Sorry, but you're sharing some very serious nonsense here.

[Not That Andrew]

Re: @AC

You can already insert custom structures into world generation. It could certainly be easier, but I'm not sure JSON is the best way to do it. Also "data driven"? As opposed to?

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: @AC

> So how do you explain the upcoming Project Aquatica?

Announced to be released in 2017. Then the release got postphoned multiple times. Latest schedule release date was May 30th, which got skipped due to "critical bugs". No new release date announced.

And most graphical improvements are Win10 only. The Java client won't receive the new shader system at all - as mentioned in November 2017, when they announced it. Microsoft vaporware.

Pretty sad how the story of Minecraft and Notch ends.

[Pascal Monett]

Re: most graphical improvements are Win10 only

You repeat that as if it was a widely known fact. Citation please ?

[Anonymous Coward]

Good alternative: Gitea

Gitea, another Github/GitLab alternative, written in Golang:

https://gitea.io/en-US/

"Gitea is a community managed fork of Gogs, lightweight code hosting solution written in Go and published under the MIT license."

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: All your open source code

Github doesn't just contain open source, but private repos too. That's probably what MS are after, in addition to developer's eye balls.

[Adam 52]

Employment terms

At the moment github has got one of the least complicated set of terms out there. If Microsoft take it over then those are going to change, which means that thousands of end developers are going to be asked to sign up to something to carry on doing their job.

In effect thousands of employment contracts are going to get unilaterally modified by a third party.

If those changes are materially detrimental, for example Microsoft may run "telemetry" and share the results with "partners", then I'm curious what the legal position is.

Welcome to the world of SaaS.

[Richard 12]

Re: Employment terms

Everyone simply leaves.

The nature of git is that all centralised servers are trivially replaced, because you've all got a complete backup already.

The only question is selecting a replacement.

[cyberdemon]

Re: Everyone simply leaves

The only tricky part is migrating all the extra bits that GitHub itself provides, e.g. issues, comments, wikis, continuous integration etc.

For that you need an import tool that uses their API e.g. https://docs.gitlab.com/ee/user/project/import/github.html

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Everyone simply leaves

> The only tricky part is migrating all the extra bits that GitHub itself provides, e.g. issues, comments, wikis, continuous integration etc.

And the GitHub OAuth account, which (I) use to log in to many other website with.

[JohnFen]

Re: Everyone simply leaves

I'm so happy I never started using OAuth or other such services.

[Lusty]

Re: Employment terms

“github has got one of the least complicated set of terms out there.”

Arguably the terms for a git repo on VSTS are simpler. Microsoft don’t force you to open source if you’re not paying, for instance.

Also, I prefer the interface in VSTS over GitHub so hopefully it won’t be killed in an acquisition!

[Anonymous Coward]

Re: Employment terms

Hope you're not confusing "open source" with publicly visible. Github doesn't force you to publish under an open source license, even with a free account. A free account doesn't let you create private repos, but you could still theoretically attach a non-open source license to your code. You could also keep your code completely secret and proprietary by using a paid sub to create private repos. Or just host on Bitbucket.