[greyhair]

More than that, github was floundering economically, and Microsoft bought them to ensure continuity, because Microsoft was the single largest user.

Don't want to rely on Microsoft for GitHub? The underlying 'git' is open source. Just deal with your git repos raw.

No one is forcing you to use github.

[bastardoperator]

This is completely false. Microsoft bought GitHub to appeal to developers. They had TFS and Azure DevOps with Git for years before the purchase. I'm also 100% certain Microsoft was/is not GitHub's largest customer.

[nixgeek]

You don’t pay $7.5B for things which are “floundering economically” usually. It was a strategic buy, and likely reflects a healthy multiple on revenue. Kudos to Microsoft for being the one to get the deal done, I’m very confident GitHub had multiple suitors.

[mythz]

> More than that, github was floundering economically, and Microsoft bought them to ensure continuity, because Microsoft was the single largest user.

Yeah they paid 7.5B so they can continue using their favorite web app? This is possibly the most naive take I've read on it that ignores any of the strategic reasons for actually acquiring them.

[hypothesis]

>More than that, github was floundering economically, and Microsoft bought them to ensure continuity, because Microsoft was the single largest user.

Was it a common knowledge at the time? I don’t recall seeing info about MS being largest user and unfortunately their newspost on acquisition returns an error…

[1] https://news.microsoft.com/2018/06/04/microsoft-to-acquire-g...

[anthony_r]

> More than that, github was floundering economically

I do not think we actually know that. Was there any release of any financial data?

Also, part of the "beauty" of the modern "tech" giants is that they manage to find alternative sources of revenue, in some cases (notably Google and Facebook) completely replacing the old school user subscription revenue. By and large people seem to be OK selling their data for either a price reduction or complete price removal for services. It is what it is.

[oytis]

Github is not the only git web frontend. I worked with Gerrit (fully open source) for a while and really enjoyed it.

[manigandham]

Github wasn't profitable but had plenty of marketshare to guarantee more funding.

Also Microsoft has plenty of infrastructure and did not need Github. How do you think Windows and Office were built for decades?

[aitchnyu]

Wow. I have memories reading Github is a bootstrapped, profitable and dominant 90 person company. What happened to profitability?

[manigandham]

Venture capital happened: https://archive.is/1t6qi