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Microsoft Is Talking About Acquiring GitHub, Says Report (zdnet.com)

Posted by BeauHD on from the symbiotic-relationships dept.

The Welcome Rain shares a report from ZDNet: Microsoft officials have been talking to GitHub about possibly acquiring the company, according to a June 1 report in Business Insider. BI claims that the two have discussed the possibility of an acquisition on an on-and-off-again basis over the years "but in the last few weeks talks have grown more serious." BI is citing unnamed "people close to the companies" as its sources. "This isn't as surprising as it would have been ten or more years ago," writes The Welcome Rain. "Microsoft is investing a lot in git, including GVFS, a Git Virtual File System to help Git work with very large codebases. What might this mean for the future of Github?"

6 of 164 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Zombie by Em+Adespoton · · Score: 3, Interesting

    Well, it's better than being acquired by Oracle. At least Microsoft lets things die a slow death and eventually pulls the plug, pushing people to a new product,instead of pretending to support a product while refusing to update it, meanwhile pulling a few key features from it to further bloat their database offerings.

  2. Bad idea by c++horde · · Score: 5, Interesting

    As a former Microsoft developer, I can tell you, this is a really bad idea. Microsoft internally has one of the best revision control systems I've ever used (Source Depot), so we know they won't use it, but they will control how source code is managed and he who controls the keys to the repository also controls the builds. I vote really, really bad idea. Start moving your projects back to SourceForge.

    1. Re:Bad idea by Actually,+I+do+RTFA · · Score: 3, Interesting

      Microsoft has good build tools. They have build chains that build onto iOS and Android (mostly to try to tempt people into also building for Windows Phone).

      --
      Your ad here. Ask me how!
    2. Re:Bad idea by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

      GitHub to SourceForge import tool: https://sourceforge.net/p/forg...

  3. Nokia, Skype, Hotmail, and LinkedIn by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    QuarterDeck, OS/2, Xenix.

    But Google kills off just as much. Remember the much-loved Google-Reader? Wave? Google-Talk?

    I was a paying skype customer before MSFT.
    I was a paying Nokia Maemo customer, before MSFT.
    I was an early adopter for LinkedIn.

    Cancelled my accounts in each, when Microsoft broke each of them.

  4. Re:Glad I switched to Bitbucket so MS gets no cash by Austerity+Empowers · · Score: 3, Interesting

    It is definitely worse, I ignore it entirely at this point. I would also stop using Github for different reasons, just on principle. MS needs to slink off into the night and be happy with its monopoly on dumb users who need invasive IT support.