[Cialug] GitHub 🖤s Microsoft

Todd Walton tdwalton at gmail.com
Mon Jun 4 16:00:36 UTC 2018


Sweet mary, mother of God, Microsoft is acquiring GitHub:
https://blog.github.com/2018-06-04-github-microsoft/

The announcment has some weird things to say, such as, "people have
smartphones now", (versus 10 years ago). And "as we look to the next decade
of software development and beyond, we know it’s all about the developer".
By definition, right? And, "their vision for the future closely matches our
own". I doubt that.

The current CEO of GitHub, whose username is, aptly, "defunkt" says, "I’ll
be taking on a new role at Microsoft" with "more details on that in the
future". I think most of us know how that one ends.

Microsoft has done some serious good in making computing (on both sides of
the screen) accessible to everyone, and they're doing better as a company
overall nowadays. But am I the only one still just a little skittish about
letting them have control of anything? I was literally just thinking this
morning about some of the truly unethical and illegal things they've done
in the past, and about how I've shied off a bit from LinkedIn since
Microsoft acquired it, though I still used it heavily last time I was
looking for a job. So... mixed reaction there.

The complementary post from Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella is here:
https://blogs.microsoft.com/blog/2018/06/04/microsoft-github-empowering-developers/

He says, "Microsoft is all-in on open source." That might be an
exaggeration.... But Nadella seems genuine, and I'm sure he intends for
that to be true. There's a whole uncut interview with him on Freakonomics
that's interesting to listen to. I'm glad he's leading Microsoft now.

It's just..... *shiver*

--
Todd


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