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This has me wondering, what Microsoft wants GitHub for? It's not like they can't use it without owning it, and I doubt they want to improve it as it is. Probabl

This has me wondering, what Microsoft wants GitHub for? It's not like they can't use it without owning it, and I doubt they want to improve it as it is. Probably they want control before integrating it with their products.

femto113 8y ago
Maybe they just want something to buy with the $100B+ cash they are sitting on?
7952 8y ago
GitHub do for developers what Microsoft want to do for the rest of business through SharePoint. Maybe they could add Office 365 editing to GitHub and pitch it as the successor to SharePoint. Or try to integrate it with their other products in some kind of Frankenstein mess.
- tracker1 8y ago
  They seem to be doing much better with these things lately though. MS Teams is incredibly good. VSTS is pretty nice as well. I'm frankly unsure why they'd take on Github, other than better integration points into Azure services, CI/CD and other tooling for commercial/enterprise users.
seltzered_ 8y ago
Microsoft has been investing in developer services for a number of years - they acquired hockeyapp (mac/ios crash analytics), and have a whole bunch of other tools under the azure brand https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/services/ https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/services/ It's almost worth re-asking the question as...what does Azure want Github for, to try and strip away thinking about MS's windows/office products. There could be some crossover between github's Atom efforts and VS Code, and MS already worked on projects like Git virtual filesystem (GVFS) for their own needs ( https://github.com/Microsoft/gvfs https://github.com/Microsoft/gvfs )
- emodendroket 8y ago
  Don't they already support a bunch of scenarios like deploying from GitHub? It'd make sense in that way.
  - discordance 8y ago
    Visual Studio Team Services, although very capable, is nowhere near as popular as GitHub. I imagine this move will lead to more integrations there... Kind of like what Microsoft did with Deis and their Kubernetes offerings.
ChicagoDave 8y ago
DevOps and IaaS is growing so fast, I'm surprised this hasn't happened yet. This is absolutely about Azure DevOps.
- markmark 8y ago
  They already have a bunch of tooling to make it easy for users on VSTS to ship their software to Azure, but VSTS users are probably 100% already in the Microsoft ecosystem. Buying GitHub and then adding tooling to make shipping from GitHub to Azure easy (and the obvious choice) would help them push Azure more to companies not currently using other Microsoft products.
PretzelFisch 8y ago
GitHub sales a product ms competes with.
hedora 8y ago
They want to join the social networking data with linkedin and office 365, yammer, enterprise Skype, etc, etc. They have a clear long-term strategy of owning professional social networks, both within and across companies. That way they can sell you access to your professional network, and your employer access to info you don’t even realize exists about you, and also sell it insights into its own org structure. GitHub would just be another piece of the puzzle.
themusicgod1 8y ago
Because much of the free software world uses it as a coordination place - it's a weak, undefended target. If they were to buy it and quickly shut it down, the free software world would be in a tailspin for quite awhile. Microsoft could use the delay to push for legislation across the world to force developers to have a Microsoft(Linkedin/Ripple enabled) license attached to their (Microsoft) global ID. Within a year or two it could be illegal, worldwide to possess non-Microsoft licensed crypto software, then eventually all software. Especially look for software relating to the boot process/BIOS related stuff - that's another weak point right now, but there are probably others.

femto113 8y ago

Maybe they just want something to buy with the $100B+ cash they are sitting on?

7952 8y ago

GitHub do for developers what Microsoft want to do for the rest of business through SharePoint. Maybe they could add Office 365 editing to GitHub and pitch it as the successor to SharePoint. Or try to integrate it with their other products in some kind of Frankenstein mess.

tracker1 8y ago
They seem to be doing much better with these things lately though. MS Teams is incredibly good. VSTS is pretty nice as well. I'm frankly unsure why they'd take on Github, other than better integration points into Azure services, CI/CD and other tooling for commercial/enterprise users.

seltzered_ 8y ago

Microsoft has been investing in developer services for a number of years - they acquired hockeyapp (mac/ios crash analytics), and have a whole bunch of other tools under the azure brand https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/services/ https://azure.microsoft.com/en-us/services/ It's almost worth re-asking the question as...what does Azure want Github for, to try and strip away thinking about MS's windows/office products. There could be some crossover between github's Atom efforts and VS Code, and MS already worked on projects like Git virtual filesystem (GVFS) for their own needs ( https://github.com/Microsoft/gvfs https://github.com/Microsoft/gvfs )

emodendroket 8y ago
Don't they already support a bunch of scenarios like deploying from GitHub? It'd make sense in that way.
- discordance 8y ago
  Visual Studio Team Services, although very capable, is nowhere near as popular as GitHub. I imagine this move will lead to more integrations there... Kind of like what Microsoft did with Deis and their Kubernetes offerings.

ChicagoDave 8y ago

DevOps and IaaS is growing so fast, I'm surprised this hasn't happened yet. This is absolutely about Azure DevOps.

markmark 8y ago
They already have a bunch of tooling to make it easy for users on VSTS to ship their software to Azure, but VSTS users are probably 100% already in the Microsoft ecosystem. Buying GitHub and then adding tooling to make shipping from GitHub to Azure easy (and the obvious choice) would help them push Azure more to companies not currently using other Microsoft products.

PretzelFisch 8y ago

GitHub sales a product ms competes with.

hedora 8y ago

They want to join the social networking data with linkedin and office 365, yammer, enterprise Skype, etc, etc. They have a clear long-term strategy of owning professional social networks, both within and across companies. That way they can sell you access to your professional network, and your employer access to info you don’t even realize exists about you, and also sell it insights into its own org structure. GitHub would just be another piece of the puzzle.

themusicgod1 8y ago

Because much of the free software world uses it as a coordination place - it's a weak, undefended target. If they were to buy it and quickly shut it down, the free software world would be in a tailspin for quite awhile. Microsoft could use the delay to push for legislation across the world to force developers to have a Microsoft(Linkedin/Ripple enabled) license attached to their (Microsoft) global ID. Within a year or two it could be illegal, worldwide to possess non-Microsoft licensed crypto software, then eventually all software. Especially look for software relating to the boot process/BIOS related stuff - that's another weak point right now, but there are probably others.