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Out of the list of companies that the article says have expressed an interest in GitHub at one point or another - Microsoft, Google, Amazon, Atlassian and Tence

Out of the list of companies that the article says have expressed an interest in GitHub at one point or another - Microsoft, Google, Amazon, Atlassian and Tencent - I have to say that Microsoft seems the most best fit, especially given their existing work on integrating GitHub with GVFS: https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2017/11/microsoft-and-github-team-up-to-take-git-virtual-file-system-to-macos-linux/ https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2017/11/microsoft-and-github...

merinowool 8y ago
I'd rather see GitHub grow and buy Docker etc.
- maltalex 8y ago
  To make them even less profitable?
- rhacker 8y ago
  Microsoft will probably buy Docker too.
  - adtac 8y ago
    I think it makes more sense for RedHat to buy Docker, but I wouldn't bet on that happening.
    - numbsafari 8y ago
      Why would anyone buy them when you can just hire away the talent and let it devolve into the moribund consulting agency they've turned it into? If anything, the failing "Docker the company" probably helps sell their competing implementations of the various OCI specs.
    - pm90 8y ago
      How does Docker even make money? I don't think I've known anyone to pay for it. And with so many people moving to kubernetes for orchestration, I don't think any of their solutions would be useful/profitable.
- zzbzq 8y ago
  They don't make enough money. User acquisition => get acquired was always the only plan for them, just like all the B2C tech startups.
  - spiralx 8y ago
    Well, they've been losing money for several years now, but they were originally profitable and operated without any VC money for years. If it weren't for the problems that growth has caused them since then I'm not sure they would be looking at acquisition at this point.
trhway 8y ago
>https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2017/11/microsoft-and-github-team-up-to-take-git-virtual-file-system-to-macos-linux/ https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2017/11/microsoft-and-github... sounds like MS is trying to make Git into Clearcase. Typical bunch of FUD stemming from not understanding the tool and how to work with it, and of course the monstrosity of a solution ( "Git at enterprise scale" (https://www.gvfs.io/) https://www.gvfs.io/)) to the rescue: "Microsoft wanted to move to Git because of Git's features, like its easy branching and its popularity among developers. But the transition faced three problems. Git wasn't designed for such vast numbers of developers—more than 3,000 actively working on the codebase. Also, Git wasn't designed for a codebase that was so large, either in terms of the number of files and version history for each file, or in terms of sheer size, coming in at more than 300GB. When using standard Git, working with the source repository was unacceptably slow. Common operations (such as checking which files have been modified) would take multiple minutes. The company's solution was to develop Git Virtual File System (GVFS). " I think it is more that Team Foundation Server is failing to scale and MS needs [their own branded/controlled] "enterprise-scale" VC solution for themselves as well as for their customers. GitHub with GVFS on top (ie. kind of Sharepoint for VC) fits nicely here.
- twunde 8y ago
  I think the more likely benefit is that pretty much every engineer knows git, it has become the de-facto standard even if other alternatives like Mercurial are easier to learn and use. In terms of onboarding new engineers, this probably saves them a week where new engineers don't have to ramp up on a new technology. It might make a difference in terms of recruiting new engineers. In terms of understanding their customers, I'd guess that a significant number of customers are using git. It probably also makes it much easier to open-source code.
- WorldMaker 8y ago
  From what I've heard, TFVC would have scaled just fine, and was similar enough to the internal to Microsoft ancient Perforce fork called Source Depot, but it wouldn't have been particularly agile. TFVC like CSV/SVN has a harder time branching because it is branch-as-path/copy-on-write, for one instance. Scaling a repo that size requires intricate lock systems which TFVC supports, but aren't very developer friendly, etc, as the Windows team was already fighting with Source Depot. The issue isn't that TFVC wouldn't have scaled, it's that Windows developers wanted git for many of the reasons that most of us use git: cheap branching, distributed/lock-free code development, etc. GVFS is nothing like Clearcase/Perforce/Source Depot/TFVC. It's still git, it's just offloading some of the .git object database on a machine to servers, just like you might not download every file in your Dropbox/OneDrive account to a local machine. GVFS doesn't even have to be "centralized". GVFS uses a simple REST API to query object servers and I still don't think anyone has had the need to do it yet, but building a GVFS daemon to pull objects from IPFS (and pin objects to it) is entirely possible.

merinowool 8y ago

I'd rather see GitHub grow and buy Docker etc.

maltalex 8y ago
To make them even less profitable?
rhacker 8y ago
Microsoft will probably buy Docker too.
- adtac 8y ago
  I think it makes more sense for RedHat to buy Docker, but I wouldn't bet on that happening.
  - numbsafari 8y ago
    Why would anyone buy them when you can just hire away the talent and let it devolve into the moribund consulting agency they've turned it into? If anything, the failing "Docker the company" probably helps sell their competing implementations of the various OCI specs.
  - pm90 8y ago
    How does Docker even make money? I don't think I've known anyone to pay for it. And with so many people moving to kubernetes for orchestration, I don't think any of their solutions would be useful/profitable.
zzbzq 8y ago
They don't make enough money. User acquisition => get acquired was always the only plan for them, just like all the B2C tech startups.
- spiralx 8y ago
  Well, they've been losing money for several years now, but they were originally profitable and operated without any VC money for years. If it weren't for the problems that growth has caused them since then I'm not sure they would be looking at acquisition at this point.

trhway 8y ago

>https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2017/11/microsoft-and-github-team-up-to-take-git-virtual-file-system-to-macos-linux/ https://arstechnica.com/gadgets/2017/11/microsoft-and-github... sounds like MS is trying to make Git into Clearcase. Typical bunch of FUD stemming from not understanding the tool and how to work with it, and of course the monstrosity of a solution ( "Git at enterprise scale" (https://www.gvfs.io/) https://www.gvfs.io/)) to the rescue: "Microsoft wanted to move to Git because of Git's features, like its easy branching and its popularity among developers. But the transition faced three problems. Git wasn't designed for such vast numbers of developers—more than 3,000 actively working on the codebase. Also, Git wasn't designed for a codebase that was so large, either in terms of the number of files and version history for each file, or in terms of sheer size, coming in at more than 300GB. When using standard Git, working with the source repository was unacceptably slow. Common operations (such as checking which files have been modified) would take multiple minutes. The company's solution was to develop Git Virtual File System (GVFS). " I think it is more that Team Foundation Server is failing to scale and MS needs [their own branded/controlled] "enterprise-scale" VC solution for themselves as well as for their customers. GitHub with GVFS on top (ie. kind of Sharepoint for VC) fits nicely here.

twunde 8y ago
I think the more likely benefit is that pretty much every engineer knows git, it has become the de-facto standard even if other alternatives like Mercurial are easier to learn and use. In terms of onboarding new engineers, this probably saves them a week where new engineers don't have to ramp up on a new technology. It might make a difference in terms of recruiting new engineers. In terms of understanding their customers, I'd guess that a significant number of customers are using git. It probably also makes it much easier to open-source code.
WorldMaker 8y ago
From what I've heard, TFVC would have scaled just fine, and was similar enough to the internal to Microsoft ancient Perforce fork called Source Depot, but it wouldn't have been particularly agile. TFVC like CSV/SVN has a harder time branching because it is branch-as-path/copy-on-write, for one instance. Scaling a repo that size requires intricate lock systems which TFVC supports, but aren't very developer friendly, etc, as the Windows team was already fighting with Source Depot. The issue isn't that TFVC wouldn't have scaled, it's that Windows developers wanted git for many of the reasons that most of us use git: cheap branching, distributed/lock-free code development, etc. GVFS is nothing like Clearcase/Perforce/Source Depot/TFVC. It's still git, it's just offloading some of the .git object database on a machine to servers, just like you might not download every file in your Dropbox/OneDrive account to a local machine. GVFS doesn't even have to be "centralized". GVFS uses a simple REST API to query object servers and I still don't think anyone has had the need to do it yet, but building a GVFS daemon to pull objects from IPFS (and pin objects to it) is entirely possible.