It's Official: Microsoft Pays Out $7.5 Billion For GitHub, Nat Friedman Becomes The CEO

[phoronix]

Phoronix: It's Official: Microsoft Pays Out $7.5 Billion For GitHub, Nat Friedman Becomes The CEO

Microsoft has publicly announced their acquisition of GitHub and they paid billions more than anticipated...

http://www.phoronix.com/scan.php?page=news_item&px=Microsoft-7.5-Billion-GitHub

[by.peroux]

So it begins...

[paupav]

rip in rip.
I hope they won't take psychopath controll over it like they did with Minecraft.

[Adarion]

So it ends...

(Seriously, this is one of those typical MS's "me too" purchases, and they'll mess it up and tear it down like they did with everything else they got into their clutches. The list is long and sadly still growing.)

[speculatrix]

https://expandedramblings.com/index.php/github-statistics/

27 Million users, so that's $277 per user.

annual revenue was 200M late last year. maybe 7.5B isn't entirely crazy?

[L_A_G]

If they really are "buying" GitHub with stock like the article says it's less Microsoft buying them and more of a corporate fusion. Particularly if it's new stock issued just for this.

Still, considering the kinds of customers GitHub has been particularly popular with I don't think they could have picked a worse tech company to merge with. Maybe ORACLE could have been worse, but at least Ellison & Co. didn't fund the SCO lawsuits.

annual revenue was 200M late last year. maybe 7.5B isn't entirely crazy?

Specially not if the stock they're using to "buy" them was newly issued just for this. In that case it actually costs them next to nothing while the previous owners of Github still get a good price for it (yes, stocks work in really logic defying ways).

[Mr. Octus]

I think a lot of the paranoia that MS is going to destroy GitHub is a bit silly, they aren't going to destroy a 7.5 billion invest; it is possible knowing MS...

My major concern is that they now own one of the largest platforms to manage code and track issues. One of the largest platforms to host projects (Azure). One of the largest target platform on the planet (for desktop, not counting Android phones).

It's just like owning most of the media creation, distribution, and platform. Not good for consumers.

[theriddick]

Once the full take over happens people using github should carefully read the terms and conditions of use, and any possible changes that occur. Microsoft might reword it in such a way that gives them legal ownership over peoples projects and code!

[Weasel]

At least it's not Apple.

I always find it funny that a leader in a space is such a sellout (let's face it, github is currently where most people share their open source code). I mean... why? Money talks but... Microsoft ended up where it is by consistently being a leader (e.g. on the desktop), not by being a sellout to some other company for some quick bucks.

The paranoia is a bit overboard though, I mean guys, you realize github was proprietary right? I mean not open source.

[Ouroboros]

While you should wait and see what happens, this is a good time to mirror your projects on sites like GitLab. GitLab makes mirroring existing projects super easy.

After how Microsoft handled CodePlex, or lack thereof, you should be cautious.