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from the good-business-or-something-else dept.
https://www.cnbc.com/amp/2018/06/01/microsoft--github-acquisition-talks-resume.html
Microsoft held talks in the past few weeks to acquire software developer platform GitHub, Business Insider reports.
One person familiar with the discussions between the companies told CNBC that they had been considering a joint marketing partnership valued around $35 million, and that those discussions had progressed to a possible investment or outright acquisition. It is unclear whether talks are still ongoing, but this person said that GitHub's price for a full acquisition was more than Microsoft currently wanted to pay.
GitHub was last valued at $2 billion in its last funding round 2015, but the price tag for an acquisition could be $5 billion or more, based on a price that was floated last year.
(Score: 2) by darkfeline on Monday June 04 2018, @08:34AM (1 child)
I don't see any posts analyzing this situation rationally.
What exactly can MS do to FOSS projects on Github? The worst I can think of is to make the service really crappy, long downtimes, add bugs, etc. The code is already public with copyright and licenses. MS can't claim ownership of the code or surreptitiously insert bugs or backdoors into the code (since Git uses a Merkle chain and has signed tags and commits). They could replace binary packages with compromised versions if they aren't signed, although I'm not sure what MS would gain from doing something so risky. They could shut down FOSS repos, but that will just cause people to move somewhere else and tank GitHub's value. By the nature of Git, there are multiple copies of every repo hosted on GitHub, so it's not like MS could hold a project hostage (although it could hold the bugs and wikis hostage). It sounds like a great way to write off a $2 billion loss on your taxes.
The source code, the most important thing, won't be affected and can be easily moved thanks to Git being decentralized. Other supporting services like bug tracking might be harder to move, but the worst that can happen is MS outright shutting them down with no export option, and that isn't very likely to happen.
I think the most likely outcomes are:
1. Nothing happens.
2. Github gets shittier for FOSS projects over the course of a year and everyone migrates to somewhere else, maybe Gitlab. There will be full migration scripts within two or three months; the most annoying thing will be changing all the URLs.
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(Score: 3, Insightful) by requerdanos on Monday June 04 2018, @01:09PM
Fair enough.
This part is certain:
Github can view anything in a private repository (they aren't encrypted). If Microsoft buys Github, that sentence changes to "Microsoft has full access to any private repository." The implications are similar, but much more far reaching.
This part is simply FUD, admittedly, but very plausible:
Github could have management problems like Sourceforge did. Sourceforge had a serious problem where its management was very out of sync with its membership such that management thought it was okay to put crapware on top of free software, turn the site into a malicious advertisement cesspool, and other such things that made it evil for someone to send a customer/client there for a download, leading to the great mass exodus away from Sourceforge (and largely to another single point of failure, Github).
If Microsoft buys Github, then instantly, at a stroke, Github will have management that is very out of sync with its membership. I do not suggest that Microsoft will suddenly start adding malware, but that isn't out of the realm of possibility since Microsoft isn't really cognizant of what features make a product malware (and many of their software products intentionally have a range of malware features that they don't consider malware). More to the point, I don't know *what* nonsense Microsoft will come up with, because I don't think like them--but I know enough about them, and about free software, to know whether I want to depend on Microsoft to keep any project I work on alive. (It's a "no" for most of them.)
Pro-Microsoft Bit: I think VSCode is a really good programming editor. I am using a MS Natural Keyboard 4000 to type this. Not hating on Microsoft, just pointing out that oil and water don't mix all that well.