Nat Friedman has cofounded Xamarin, he understands Open Source and I'm sure he'll do well as CEO of GitHub. I'm cautiously optimistic about it.<p>Microsoft could pull a Skype of course, but on the upside this might turn out to be a good thing, as in this climate many businesses, operating at scale and giving away so many freebies, are struggling and GitHub could have been the next SourceForge.<p>Who knows, maybe they'll even open source it. Fingers crossed.
> GitHub will retain its product philosophy. We love GitHub because of the deep care and thoughtfulness that goes into every facet of the developer’s experience. I understand and respect this, and know that we will continue to build tasteful, snappy, polished tools that developers love.<p>> Ultimately, my job is to make GitHub better for you.<p>Whenever I see a product claim it's "for you", I cringe. You just can't put something on the web or on TV and say "for you" and have it mean anything useful.<p>What I always loved about GitHub was that it was the underdog, so they naturally built tools so that a couple of developers in a garage (well, cafe) could have access to the same type of tools that a Fortune-100 company has (and has to pay companies like IBM big bucks to install and maintain). It's using technology to help those with fewer resources, which is to me the entire purpose of technology.<p>Almost everything I've seen from GitHub in the past year or two has been to help enterprise developers at big established companies. Creating giant workflows and integrating with legacy systems and such. The little things that individuals use are slipping through the cracks. When I reported that the milestone date-picker went away for Safari users, for example, they just told me "Sorry".<p>"Developers" has become a dirty word. It's a weasel word that companies use to try to convince me they're talking about me, while actually talking about someone and something completely different. If you can't be more specific than that, you're almost certainly wasting my time.<p>I miss the GitHub whose homepage had logos of little startups I'd barely heard of, and direct links to new and interesting repos. Now they've got IBM and SAP and Walmart logos. It's clear that the "developers" they're targeting no longer includes me.
TFA mentions the community "paper cuts" issue tracker[1]. I'd love to know what's so hard about the standout top-voted issue[2] that it hasn't been implemented since being logged in 2014.<p>[1] <a href="https://github.com/isaacs/github/issues?q=is%3Aissue+is%3Aopen+sort%3Areactions-%2B1-desc" rel="nofollow">https://github.com/isaacs/github/issues?q=is%3Aissue+is%3Aop...</a><p>[2] <a href="https://github.com/isaacs/github/issues/283" rel="nofollow">https://github.com/isaacs/github/issues/283</a>
My reservations about Microsoft's acquisition of GitHub are not that they might ruin it or whatever, but that I've no interest in adding to the value of any Microsoft product by being their user.<p>For the same reason I use a Gnu/Linux operating system. Truthfully there are things that I imagine MS or apple might do better, but that's beside the point for me. It's a political stance.
The title in this case is not very clear because it's out of context. Should be something like "the Microsoft acquisition of GitHub is complete" to be more factual and instantly understandable.
So when I write a project in C, will Github show me a popup recommending I switch to C# for a faster, safer development experience?<p>Microsoft feels like an untrustworthy friend to me -- I'll go to a party at Microsoft's house, but I wouldn't let Microsoft hold my wallet.
Just a friendly reminder: Corporations are not humans. Corporation's acts are driven by profits. Last decade Microsoft CEO was describing Linux as "communism".
Some say, till this day Microsoft would go after hardware manufacturers who use Linux for patent fees, having covert patent war vs Linux. [1]<p>I really like how Microsoft is now, all open, free, unicorns and rainbows. Hell, they're producing some terrific open source themselves and support community.<p>But lets not forget - corporations are not people. Next CEO may use Github to put obstacles on OSS movement's way. Just because it is good now, doesn't mean it will be good tomorrow, or in 10 years.<p>P.S. Personally, I really happy where Microsoft is heading right now, and I think they're doing terrific job with their open source projects. You go Microsoft. I hope OSS way would be successful enough so MS would embrace it even more... But you never know.<p>EDIT:
[1] I'm aware that Microsoft recently joined Open Invention Network patent pool. But there're criticism that contributed patents are not important ones.
I tried to find ExFAT patents, but couldn't in OIN list. Also, it is really hard to find full OIN contributed patent list. Here's US patent numbers MS going around asking money for, couldn't find any confirmation of all of them being contributed 5579517 5758352 5745902 6286013
Interesting joining OIN was driven by GitHub acquisition.<p>Did MS confirm that them joining OIN includes non aggression with exFAT and ActiveSync patents?
Honestly I'll be happy no matter how this turns out. If this deters developers as a result, it should open up more potential for new platforms. If it does great, then open source as a community will continue to grow and be backed up by the credibility of Microsoft.
Nitpick: Nat Friedman's GitHub profile [1] does not have STAFF badge yet.<p>[1] <a href="https://github.com/nat" rel="nofollow">https://github.com/nat</a>
The benefits or Microsoft owning GitHub seem to keep rolling in. The visual studio integration has gotten much better already and I'm excited to see how they begin to integrate github into Azure.
How long before GitHub moves to Azure?<p>Having it in RackSpace and AWS is bad optics, but they also must know Azure is not stable enough for something as large and visible as GitHub.<p>I expect this to be the first integration they try. Stockpiling the popcorn.
> Ultimately, my job is to make GitHub better for you.<p>Who asked you to make GitHub better though? It's pretty darn good already. I fear that the new CEO will try to make things better when they are already good. I'm really scared that GitHub will end up like Azure DevOps, perhaps get merged or shut down entirely when they feel they have feature parity. Currently there is no great GitHub alternative IMHO and for selfish reasons I wish Microsoft could just leave it. The most I am scared is to wake up one day and see the most ugly "Metro" UX applied to GitHub.