Microsoft and GitHub have held acquisition talks

Sat, 02 Jun 2018 01:34:54 +0200

Sorry what?!??!!?

Microsoft has been talking about buying GitHub, a startup at the center of the software world last valued at $2 billion

Microsoft has recently held talks to buy GitHub, reviving on-and-off conversations the two have had for years, according to people close to the companies.

The talks have come as GitHub, a popular platform for software developers, has struggled to hire a new CEO.

GitHub was last valued at $2 billion in 2015, thanks to a $250 million funding round led by Sequoia Capital, and it is doing well financially, multiple people tell us. But the price tag for an acquisition could be $5 billion or more, and it's not clear that Microsoft is willing to pay that much. It's also not clear whether the talks are ongoing.

Andrew

Sat, 02 Jun 2018 13:35:20 +0200

I've been confident for a long time that it's only a matter of time before GitHub becomes a net "negative force" on the web. Most of us haven't been too worried because the git system is already decentralized so data is not held hostage by the GitHub platform, and everything has been explicitly public for non-paying members. The main issue is that so many software projects rely on it, and there there is a strong network effect as with any other successful social networking platform. When GitHub begins doing unethical things, people will tolerate it for a long time as they have with Facebook. We can only hope that some federated protocol system like Zot or ActivityPub will be able to connect independent sites running the likes of GitLab or Gogs so that developers can continue to benefit from the social networking aspects without being trapped in yet another prison.

Jake Moomaw

Sat, 02 Jun 2018 13:35:35 +0200

Well, shit.