Over the weekend, news broke that Microsoft would acquire code-repository company GitHub. Today, Washington-based Microsoft confirmed the news and disclosed that they forked out $7.5 Billion in a stock deal. GitHub, which is a darling to many software developers as they use the platform to collaborate and even as a portfolio of their work, was last valued at $2 billion back in 2015.
Following the news, was an uproar by a section of developers and persons involved, concerned that Microsoft would “kill” GitHub. A couple of theories emerged, most of them based on the dark days of Microsoft, where the company and anything open source would not see eye-to-eye.
Some of the theories are downright crazy while others actually shed some light on underlying trust issues that Microsoft has with developers and its customers. The crazy theories ranged from developers claiming that Microsoft would only allow GitHub access via Edge to people just making fun of how Clippy would be making a come back as an assistant on GitHub. Hey, there’s even a theory of how Microsoft will use GitHub to steal ideas from developers since they will have access to the repositories.
Here are a few tweets on how devs forsee the future of GitHub under Microsoft:
This is your future now! #microsoft #github pic.twitter.com/bej0F6di67
— Dewhurst Security (@dewhurstsec) June 4, 2018
Looks like #GitHub has started making changes already. pic.twitter.com/k69AJYuMZF
— codecourse (@teamcodecourse) June 4, 2018
The #Microsoft + #GitHub drinking game. Drink a shot every time any of the following gets mentioned today…
1. Login requiring MS account
2. Clippy assistant
3. Moving to GitLab
4. Forcing use of Edge
5. Death of open source— Matt Brailsford (@mattbrailsford) June 4, 2018
Screens from a dark Github future pic.twitter.com/blvgjAiTqF
— Programmer Humor (@PR0GRAMMERHUM0R) June 4, 2018
One guy, Mat Velloso, who according to his unverified Twitter profile is the Technical Advisor to Microsoft’s CTO, had quite a lot to say about the theories:
https://twitter.com/matvelloso/status/1003443487268720640
https://twitter.com/matvelloso/status/1003447202302185474
And yeah, he does have some puns of his own:
https://twitter.com/matvelloso/status/1003454844886110208
https://twitter.com/matvelloso/status/1003498581133688833
As developers were busy making noise how GitHub should not have sold its soul to the devil (read Microsoft), there were a few people who actually saw the good in it:
Sad to see all these cheap negative quips about Github & Microsoft. MS has been doing some awesome work in Open Source recently (just look at VS Code), and hired some excellent people. I see no reason to be worried.
— Filippo Valsorda @filippo.abyssdomain.expert (@FiloSottile) June 4, 2018
https://twitter.com/GossiTheDog/status/1003531299594932224
Friendly reminder that git is open source, but GitHub *isn’t*.
Also, while I don’t like Windows, Microsoft has a track of making great software for developers. So I’m not concerned
— Belén 😱 (@ladybenko) June 4, 2018
Microsoft is more likely to open source parts of Github than Github ever were.
— Justin Cormack (@justincormack) June 4, 2018
You can say what you want about past Microsoft, but their developer tools are fantastic and open now also to other platforms. Microsoft has embraced open source lately. GitHub will make a good fit.
— Niels Leenheer (@html5test) June 4, 2018
Then there was this guy with the parting shot:
Thinking about alternative acquirers of #GitHub
Apple: XCode projects only
Google: Ads everywhere. In repos and source code
Amazon: GitHub Prime. Same day commits
Facebook: Shares all project data with all other projects
Twitter: No ability to edit anything
— Michael Gillett | michaelgillett1 on Threads (@MichaelGillett) June 4, 2018
