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Microsoft Is Said to Have Agreed to Acquire Coding Site GitHub (bloomberg.com)
Bloomberg reports:
Microsoft Corp. has agreed to acquire GitHub Inc., the code repository company popular with many software developers, and could announce the deal as soon as Monday, according to people familiar with the matter. GitHub preferred selling the company to going public and chose Microsoft partially because it was impressed by Chief Executive Officer Satya Nadella, said one of the people, who asked not to be identified discussing private information. Terms of the agreement weren't known on Sunday. GitHub was last valued at $2 billion in 2015.
GitHub is an essential tool for coders. Many corporations, including Microsoft and Alphabet Inc.'s Google, use GitHub to store their corporate code and to collaborate. It's also a social network of sorts for developers. While GitHub's losses have been significant -- it lost $66 million over three quarters in 2016 -- it had revenue of $98 million in nine months of that year.
On Friday, it was reported that Microsoft was in talks with GitHub about an acquisition. Now it seems like it's actually happening.
Update: Our sister site, SourceForge, has weighed in. Here is a tool that will import your GitHub project to SourceForge.
Update #2: Already, we are seeing plenty of backlash over this news. One user has started a petition to stop Microsoft from buying GitHub.
Update #3: It's official. Microsoft has acquired GitHub for a whopping sum of $7.5B.
Microsoft Corp. has agreed to acquire GitHub Inc., the code repository company popular with many software developers, and could announce the deal as soon as Monday, according to people familiar with the matter. GitHub preferred selling the company to going public and chose Microsoft partially because it was impressed by Chief Executive Officer Satya Nadella, said one of the people, who asked not to be identified discussing private information. Terms of the agreement weren't known on Sunday. GitHub was last valued at $2 billion in 2015.
GitHub is an essential tool for coders. Many corporations, including Microsoft and Alphabet Inc.'s Google, use GitHub to store their corporate code and to collaborate. It's also a social network of sorts for developers. While GitHub's losses have been significant -- it lost $66 million over three quarters in 2016 -- it had revenue of $98 million in nine months of that year.
On Friday, it was reported that Microsoft was in talks with GitHub about an acquisition. Now it seems like it's actually happening.
Update: Our sister site, SourceForge, has weighed in. Here is a tool that will import your GitHub project to SourceForge.
Update #2: Already, we are seeing plenty of backlash over this news. One user has started a petition to stop Microsoft from buying GitHub.
Update #3: It's official. Microsoft has acquired GitHub for a whopping sum of $7.5B.
And were suddenly erased.
Sourceforge offers git, so it seems like a perfectly reasonable bit of self-promotion to add. And it’s not like Whipslash is removing mentions of the other possible places people might consider migrating to.
Z Shell’s home is on SourceForge. If I wanted to take the time, I could come up with other prominent SF denizens for you - but regardless it’s apparent not everyone shares your sentiments.
The current owners do seem to be trying to turn SF back into a useful home for open-source projects. It looks to me like they've removed most/all of the crappy behaviors put in place by Certain previous owners. It’s not the only game in town... but it’s a legitimate competitor again.
#DeleteChrome
Thanks 93. I appreciate it. Sometimes I feel like someone saw it fit to burn down a museum and all the contents inside, and I stepped in to put out the fire, yet I still get some really vile hatred. In case anyone is wondering, here's what we've done since we acquired SourceForge in 2016 https://sourceforge.net/blog/i...
It remains to be seen how much Microsoft has paid for GitHub, but why pay anything if they're unprofitable
The classic Economics answer, is that you believe that it is unprofitable because it is poorly managed, and that you can do a better job of managing it to profitability. This usually means that you can integrate it with your existing businesses, streamline, and cut a lot of costs. This also usually includes massive layoffs at the purchased company, accompanied by folks jumping ship to look elsewhere for a job, before they are eventually fired.
IBM's ThinkPad business was unprofitable when Lenovo bought it. Lenovo turned it around into profitability.
Of course, there are often other ulterior motives. Microsoft bought Nokia because they thought Nokia built hardware would help Windows Phone be a success.
Microsoft was wrong. So they did what any other rational investor would do . . . cut your losses and let it die.
We'll see in about a year what Github's fate is . . . profitability . . . or death . . .
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
That's where my code won't be.
No way.
I've been kicked in the face, in a business damaging way, by Microsoft acquisitions. In fact a couple of times.
There's no way that my intellectual property, open source or not, will be under Microsoft control.
Another consultant who stuck it out.
"We are the Priests, of the Temples of Syrinx..."
Why does everyone expect digital/virtual goods and services to be free? And then those same people flip shit about the advertising and sales of submitted and extrapolated data about them.
Y'all got any more of that good strawman? Who is this everybody?
The resources to host this stuff, and do so reliably, quickly, and securely, is not cheap. The cost to continue improving it is not cheap. Explain to me, please, why you expect a whole lot of something for absolutely nothing.
That is all beside teh point. This is Microsoft, they manage to turn things to shit very quickly. Perhaps they will raise GitHub to the quality of their Windows 10 updates, eh? I wouldn't be surprised if the first thing they do is require a Microsoft account to access anything as well.
The shepherds did so well protecting the flock that the sheep no longer believed that wolves existed.
Completely different owners did that. We got rid of all that nonsense.
You know what they'll put in the usage terms with regard to what you are allowed to do with your project?
You can check out any time you want, but you can never leave.
"GitHub is an essential tool for coders"
No it's not. It's a *useful* tool for *many* coders. Many other coders use other cloud-based source code control services - or none at all.
It's important that we be precise in our language, and stop resorting to hyperbole.
What's the business model, inquiring minds want to know?
How long until you need a microsoft account to use github?
How long until commercial customers also need to subscribe to Office 365?
Given other activity by Microsoft, I wonder if Software Freedom Conservancy needs to step in and protect the Git mark.
(https://www.git-scm.com/about/trademark section 2.3)
casings works at github. The mandatory company hormone treatment makes him bitchy.
If Microsoft does acquire Github, does that mean that they will instantly have access to all the private repos from Google, Apple, IBM, etc?
My company has never bundled malware with any projects. In fact we eliminated that practice immediately after acquiring SourceForge and now scan every single project on the site for malware.
Not necessarily. A lot of companies will acquire and keep running losses on those just to keep the market share, account information or some integration or whatever is actually "valuable" in the grander scheme of things. Some things just aren't expressed in money.
Microsoft has been chasing developers since Ballmer got forced out. With low cost or free development cloud infrastructure and free dev tools, hardware and software. They think the future is going to be in custom middleware in the cloud and they're betting big on it.
Custom electronics and digital signage for your business: www.evcircuits.com
We actually don't bundle spyware with our installers. In fact that's the first practice we eliminated when we acquired SourceForge in 2016, along with instituting malware scans for every project, https downloads and project web hosting, a redesigned experience, and much more. https://arstechnica.com/inform...
You posted this twice so I'll respond twice: We actually don't bundle spyware with our installers. In fact that's the first practice we eliminated when we acquired SourceForge in 2016, along with instituting malware scans for every project, https downloads and project web hosting, a redesigned experience, and much more. https://arstechnica.com/inform...