GitHub, the world’s largest gay dating site and, no, the world’s largest social programming and code hosting site, just celebrated its 10th birthday yesterday by joining Microsoft.
Rumors of a Microsoft acquisition of GitHub have been swirling since last weekend, and it usually takes a day or two for such rumors to turn out to be true. So, as expected. On Monday, Bloomberg reported that Microsoft has agreed to buy GitHub, the popular code hosting site. That evening, Microsoft also confirmed the news on its official website.
GitHub’s owner has been changed from GitHub, Inc. Change to Microsoft, Inc.
Is GitHub, the world’s largest social programming and code hosting site, being acquired, especially by Microsoft, a good thing or a bad thing? How does this affect developers around the world?
Is it humiliating to be acquired?
A lot of entrepreneurs, in the early days of their startup, swear that my company will never be acquired, I will become a giant. There are more ruthless, I do not want to go public, do not want the capital of the money.
And the reality, often very cruel, for many start-up companies, the best home may be acquired by the giant!
“Being acquired is a humiliation” is generally a uniquely Chinese idea. Since ancient times, the Most important thing for The Chinese people is “territorial integrity”. The Qing Dynasty had a system: anyone who lost an inch of land was not allowed to erect a monument. It can be seen that in the traditional Chinese concept, it is dishonorable or even shameful to be invaded/annexed/acquired, so they subconsciously show a kind of contempt.
But that’s a bit extreme. Those who are familiar with history may know that from the establishment to the collapse of the Song Dynasty, the sixteen prefectures of Yanyun were always in the hands of daliao. When evaluating this period of history, most people think that the loss of the sixteen States of Yanyun is an important reason for the collapse of the Song Dynasty. However, what history does not tell us is that if the 16 states of Yanyun had not been in the hands of liao in the early days of the founding of the People’s Republic of China, the peace between Liao and Liao would not have lasted for a hundred years, and the Song dynasty would not have existed for more than 300 years.
Business is like a battlefield, in which men win or lose. So fighting for every inch of land is not the norm in business. In the development of business ethics up to now, the standard of judgment roughly falls between the maximization of shareholders’ rights and interests and the consideration of the interests of shareholders and stakeholders.
The humiliation of being acquired depends only on whether the rights and interests of shareholders and stakeholders are violated. In this particular case, it’s basically a happy ending, nothing to be ashamed of.
So, I wait fart people, stand on the sidelines of the Angle, see lively good. For some acquisitions, there are many factors to consider, such as shareholders’ opinions, CEO’s KPIs, acquiring patents by acquiring the company, or even poaching employees by acquiring the company.
Also, many companies, or founders of companies, do well after being acquired. Such as FoxMail Tencent after the acquisition of Zhang Xiaolong. No matter for Tencent, or for Zhang Xiaolong, or for FoxMail, this is the best attribution.
In a word, a lot of things, we can not see clearly, do not see, do not listen to, do not speak. When you look into an abyss, the abyss looks into you.
Is being bought by Microsoft a bad thing?
Microsoft has led a number of big acquisitions in recent years, but none of the acquired companies are said to be in good shape. Let’s take a look at some of Microsoft’s major acquisitions and investments in recent years:
On June 13, 2016, Microsoft acquired linkedin for $26.2 billion.
In September 2014, Microsoft announced a $2.5 billion acquisition of Swedish game developer Mojang, including ownership of the company and intellectual property rights to games such as minecraft.
In September 2013, Microsoft announced the acquisition of Nokia devices and services for $7.2 billion, including the licensing of Nokia patents and the use of the nokia brand. The acquisition was completed in April 2014.
In June 2012, Microsoft acquired Yammer, an enterprise social network, for $1.2 billion.
In May 2011, Microsoft bought Skype for $8.5 billion, its largest acquisition at the time.
In October 2007, Microsoft invested $240m in Facebook in return for a 1.6 per cent stake at a valuation of $15bn.
Of the companies that have been acquired or invested in, with the exception of Facebook (FB), which is still doing well, the others seem to have had no significant post-acquisition gains, and many have declined.
Does this mean that the companies acquired by Microsoft are somehow cursed? Is being bought by Microsoft the biggest failure of a company?
** But I don’t think the GitHub deal is necessarily a bad thing. Why? Let’s take a look at GitHub’s current status.
Making the status quo
GitHub has grown into the largest Hacker community in the world, with 27 million developers hosting 80 million code, which has become GitHub’s greatest wealth.
Despite the success of the community, GitHub’s operation as a commercial company has always been questioned.
GitHub currently makes money in three main ways:
1. Code hosting services are profitable
2. Data precipitation and cloud storage monetization
3. Headhunter recruitment is profitable
GitHub has a good revenue model, but Bloomberg also reported that GitHub was acquired by Microsoft:
While GitHub, which makes software development tools, has gained venture capital love, the company appears to have overspent and not grown revenue strongly enough, clouding its future prospects.
Of course, this is a 2016 report. It’s 2018. Is GitHub doing any better? Things may not be rosy.
In August 2017, CEO Vanstras announced his resignation. Since then, GitHub hasn’t found a successor as CEO.
Leaderless and in deficit. GitHub, it seems, is not all it looks.
Why is being bought by Microsoft not necessarily a bad thing
After the news of GitHub’s acquisition by Microsoft came out, most people were pretty pessimistic about GitHub’s demise.
Some even joked:
That’s obviously not true, as GitHub already has an enterprise and home version.
Microsoft’s attitude towards GitHub is actually a process of change from hostility to embrace. Under Nadella, the once-closed Microsoft is becoming more open.
I think this is not necessarily a bad thing for three reasons.
First, Microsoft’s attitude to open source
In 2014, Microsoft opened an account on GitHub, and Microsoft now contributes over 1,800 repositories on GitHut, holding the number one spot for the third year in a row.
I went to GitHub to check out Microsoft’s open source and took a few screenshots to show you:
There were 1,835 open source projects, far outpacing Google’s 1,288 +233 (Google + Google Samples) and Apache’s 1,560.
This can see actually, Microsoft is in open source respect still next quite big kongfu. At least in terms of its contribution to the open source community, Microsoft is ahead of the curve.
Microsoft could help GitHub monetize
For a site like GitHub, they probably don’t have a lot of DNA in terms of monetization.
Microsoft has a lot of experience in making money. Ha ha. So it’s possible That Microsoft will help GitHub monetize.
And GitHub doesn’t have to worry about running out of cash, thanks to Microsoft’s acquisition money and the company’s constant infusion of cash.
Third, Microsoft could help GitHub improve its technical capabilities
In addition to Microsoft’s attitude towards open source, Microsoft’s financial support for Git. Microsoft’s technology may also be what GitHub desperately needs.
In the decade since Git’s launch, it has endured numerous attacks. The scale of DDOS attacks has been breaking records.
On February 28, 2018, at around 12:15 PM EST, GitHub suffered what may be the largest DDoS attack to date, with a peak traffic of 1.35Tbps.
Since February 28, GitHub has experienced two intermittent outages. Ten minutes after the attack, GitHub asked Akamai, a CDN service provider, to take over traffic to GitHub. The attack ended eight minutes after Akamai intervened, and GitHub confirmed that the confidentiality or integrity of user data on the site had not been compromised.
While GitHub’s engineers are certainly outstanding, there is certainly something GitHub can learn from Microsoft’s technical capabilities as a top technology company in the world.
I hope that GitHub can export some of its technical capabilities to GitHub after becoming a subsidiary of Microsoft, and then improve its website in terms of attack and defense.
Wishes and Expectations
In short, Microsoft needs GitHub’s community and technical resources, and GitHub needs better managers to help it get what it needs.
GitHub’s image among programmers is neutral, even religious, despite being a money-making business.
I hope that GitHub will stay true to its original aspiration after “marrying into a wealthy family”, and code farmers will continue to have fun making friends, learning and communicating here.
So now that GitHub is being acquired, who’s next? StackOverflow? Docker? .
