Microsoft sent tremors through the open source world last week, when it announced that it would acquire the popular developer platform GitHub for $7.5 billion in company stock. The acquisition is expected to close by the end of the calendar year. GitHub, one of the world’s largest computer code repositories, is home to more than 28 million developers for collaboration and distribution of projects. In recent years, Microsoft has stepped up its activity through several partnerships with GitHub.
The problem for OSS on Github is that Microsoft is a for-profit corporation. Even if MS is altruistically willing to spend billions on goodwill efforts today, that may change tomorrow; without noone being the wiser for it.
It is only prudent to be wary of this acquisition, especially given the company's past. Having presented multi-million dollar proposals to boards, I wonder how this acquisition was presented, debated upon and finally authorized.
My gut feeling tells me that there is much more going on behind the scenes than the platitudes and empty promises we've been spoon fed are telling us.
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What Microsoft’s GitHub Deal Promises to Programmers
Posted by: Jack M. Germain June 11, 2018 11:00 AMMicrosoft sent tremors through the open source world last week, when it announced that it would acquire the popular developer platform GitHub for $7.5 billion in company stock. The acquisition is expected to close by the end of the calendar year. GitHub, one of the world’s largest computer code repositories, is home to more than 28 million developers for collaboration and distribution of projects. In recent years, Microsoft has stepped up its activity through several partnerships with GitHub.
It is only prudent to be wary of this acquisition, especially given the company's past. Having presented multi-million dollar proposals to boards, I wonder how this acquisition was presented, debated upon and finally authorized.
My gut feeling tells me that there is much more going on behind the scenes than the platitudes and empty promises we've been spoon fed are telling us.