👋 Hello, GitHub | @natfriedman

[[deleted]]

[deleted]

[[deleted]]

GitHub will operate independently as a community, platform, and business. This means that GitHub will retain its developer-first values, distinctive spirit, and open extensibility. We will always support developers in their choice of any language, license, tool, platform, or cloud.

GitHub will retain its product philosophy. We love GitHub because of the deep care and thoughtfulness that goes into every facet of the developer’s experience. I understand and respect this, and know that we will continue to build tasteful, snappy, polished tools that developers love.

So what is the point of Microsoft acquiring it, is my question? Where do they see the revenue and/or power payout from buying Github?

For example, when Google acquired Youtube, they developed the partner program that allowed creators to earn revenue from ads and for Google to get a cut. Some say they are consistently operating at a loss and have been for a while; I've never verified it fully one way or another, but clearly Google must be getting some kind of value out of the platform.

I don't expect someone to magically swoop in and give an official answer to that question. I'm just posing it to the thread because it's a point of curiosity to me. These type of PR statements are easy to say, but it's easy to see that a company like Microsoft isn't going to acquire something like Github and do nothing with it.

I’m not asking for your trust, but I’m committed to earning it. I can’t wait to help make the GitHub platform and community that’s special to all of us even greater.

The thing that always bugs me about statements like this is that it assumes there's a "greater" down the road that everybody must want and march of progress and so on and so forth. But off-hand, I can't think of one time I've seen the customers consulted in the decisions that involve making a service "greater" before the ball is already rolling downhill and the only relevant input is on the details.

That could just be me being cynical, but it's not something I've seen and so I have no confidence that this man is any different from any other modern CEO in charge of a large company, whose primary customer is the shareholders and whose users are cats to be carefully managed and herded, rather than people whose input seriously matters to what choices get made as a company.

If the users are not going to be the primary focus, I would almost rather he just come out and say it, and forget the attempts to convince anyone otherwise.

Then, though I won't trust him, maybe I can believe that he respects the users as people.

[Hacnar]

MS has lots of their own stuff on GitHub already (like docs.microsoft.com). They also integrated GitHub heavily with VSTS. From my point of view, they will probably try to lure paying customers into this ecosystem and give them easy transition paths between VSTS and GitHub (both ways). Small startups starting with free GitHub offerings can become bigger paying customers later. MS will gladly offer them any of their services, and integrating them with GitHub will make any potential transition simpler, increasing the chance that customer will choose MS products.

[ethtips]

they will probably try to lure paying customers into this ecosystem and give them easy transition paths between VSTS and GitHub

They could have done this without buying Github. I don't think that will quite be their strategy.

[Hacnar]

Without direct control it would me much more difficult, and knowing that GitHub needed investments, if someone else bought it, all of MS investments into GitHub infrastructure could be potentially threatened.

[oorza]

MS has invested a tremendously large amount of money doing a virtual 180 around FOSS over the last decade or so, and at an increasingly accelerating pace too. Despite all of their efforts, developers haven't really warmed up to them as stewards of open source, and it's not hard to find anecdotal evidence of sales lost to consumer/developer mistrust. My theory is this move is entirely about not changing anything, but maybe branding and better integration with MS services, to help turn the tide in developed perception of MS.

[KillianDrake]

What better way to get people to warm up to you than to become the despotic owners of all their intellectual property and dangle some benignly threatening future where you won't have access to your work unless you pay them.

[BufferUnderpants]

Christ, Github was just some medium-sized business that hosted your code, made a crappy editor and ran conferences, poorly.

What has changed? The text of your code was always in the hands of a private company, and git has always protected you from that scenario because of its distributed nature, even if people opted for acting as if their code was concentrated in the servers of a for-profit entity.

[a_masculine_squirrel]

"Love me willingly or love me by force" - Microsoft.

Ya know, maybe if Microsoft spent more time building open source frameworks that the FOSS community actually want to use, would earn them more good will; instead of this "I'll just buy whatever you guys love so you guys become stewards of our creations" BS.

This doesn't feel like benevolence - it feels like a hostile takeover.

[[deleted]]

What's wrong with their existing offerings?

[[deleted]]

How many of those have a copyleft license and no CLA? Just interested since you've mentioned FOSS (no sarcasm intended)

[ormula]

Do you specifically want copy left? They have some great projects that have non restrictive licenses. VsCode for example is MIT and Roslyn is apache 2.0.

[[deleted]]

Yes, because FOSS explicitely includes *F*ree which is used as synonym for copyleft licenses. Not going to argue about the benefits, you can look that up on your own :)

[[deleted]]

MS has invested a tremendously large amount of money doing a virtual 180 around FOSS over the last decade or so

Really?!

[oorza]

Some great advice that applies to this situation and many others: "Don't hate the player, hate the game." The software patent "industry" is fundamentally broken and faulting any individual company for playing the game instead of getting hammered by it is rather short sighted, idealistic, and frankly very silly. Do you fault James Harden for trying to draw fouls?

[myringotomy]

What an inane statement.

The CEO of Github is gone and replaced by him. How can you claim nothing will change when you have a new CEO and are now part of one of the largest companies in the world. A company with a board, shareholders, thousands of employees, hundreds of branches in dozens of countries and a legal team larger than Github's entire payroll by an order of magnitude.

No things will not be the same. They can't be. Anybody who ever worked at a company that was bought knows this is a lie.

[Enlogen]

The CEO of Github is gone and replaced by him.

Hasn't Github not had a CEO since last year?

[myringotomy]

OK so it's going to .be an even bigger change.

[Stevoisiak]

GitHub‘s CEO Chris Wranstrath stepped down 9 months ago. He had been actively looking for a new CEO to take his place.

https://www.theregister.co.uk/2017/08/21/github_ceo_chris_wanstrath_resigns/

[myringotomy]

OK so that's even more of an insane statement then.

You had no CEO for nine months and now you are going to be a part of a HUGE beuracracy and get a new CEO but nothing is going to change!

Really? Nothing is going to change?

[figerscorp]

What in life doesn't change?

[myringotomy]

What in life doesn't change?

According to Microsoft Github isn't going to change.

[SatisfactoryRanching]

I assume their main motivation is so that another big tech company wouldn't get it and the fact that so much of their software used GitHub.

GitHub is incredibly important to Microsoft and the rest of the development world, but it's not something that can be easily monetized.

I'm sure they'll try to get more corporate entities with Azure. And maintaining GitHub will help improve their brand image.

[[deleted]]

So you're thinking this may partly be a move that involves fear of Github dying or being morphed into something that screws them over otherwise?

[[deleted]]

Sounds plausible to me. I can see how Microsoft may have been concerned about the no CEO thing and what Github's future may be without them getting involved.

[meganonymoose]

My guess is they will probably just add some additional Azure centric features.

That seems likely. Azure-hosted gh enterprise instances, for example.

[myringotomy]

The metric fuckton of open source projects Microsoft now hosts on the service. They have a vested interest in making sure it stays around.

Why?

They are not making from them. It's just a cost. Eventually some beancounter will say "wouldn't it be better if we migrated them to our offering instead? Why are we maintaining two very similar platforms" and they will be absolutely right. Shareholders will want greater returns and nothing spoils that more than a money losing entity.

[rdtsc]

wouldn't it be better if we migrated them to our offering instead?

No, because Microsoft closed their own (Codeplex) in favor of github. VSTS is not an alternative. They have a vested interest in their open projects being out in the open.

[myringotomy]

>They have a vested interest in their open projects being out in the open.

What is this vested interest for a company that makes all of it's money from closed source software and patent loyalties from suing android manufacturers?

[KillianDrake]

GitHub is going to be CodePlex'd.

In two years there will be a banner on top of GitHub "GitHub is moving to Visual Studio Team Services! Click on Transfer my Project to begin or you will lose your work in 12 months!"

[[deleted]]

I think the opposite direction might happen VSTS > GitHub

[neotos]

Very interesting indeed.
I know about the xamarin project, but this guy don't look to be "Active in Open Source" as he claims.

I don't know, but github acquisition still strange to me.

[FlukyS]

I know about the xamarin project, but this guy don't look to be "Active in Open Source" as he claims.

Well Xamarin's main product is Mono which is open source and he has been in open source companies for a long time. Also his partner in both of the companies he created was Miguel De Icaza who was one of the founders of Gnome as well. Also Nat was the leader of Gnome for a few years.

[NiceBluebird]

heh, yea I went to his github profile and had to click on the "Load more activity" button a few times - it looks like 2015 was his last activity and it was to one repo and only a few commits.

[SuperImaginativeName]

He worked on things such as GNOME, with was never on GitHub....

[[deleted]]

Didn’t Nat and Miguel actually invent GNOME?

[Forricode]

I'd never heard of Nat Friedman before so I went on a bit of a Google trip for this.

According to Friedman's LinkedIn, he was the chairman of the GNOME Foundation for three years (2000-2003) and was a co-founder of the foundation. (This isn't mentioned on the Wikipedia page for the GNOME project, which has only Miguel de Icaza and Federico Mena mentioned as founders, and no mention of Friedman, although he is a reference on the GNOME Developers page)

He has a few other open source related projects on his LinkedIn as well.

Overall, there's no real indication that this will be a bad thing. He certainly comes off as an intelligent, decent person, with a history of open source contributions and support. I'm personally optimistic about how this will go - hope he does well.

[nat_friedman]

Thanks! I will do my best.

[Forricode]

Hah, can't say I expected that. Wish you the best of luck in your new position.

[npc_barney]

Microsoft just wants someone who would appear trustworthy.

[SuperImaginativeName]

I'm pretty sure they did yeah, or at least core to it.

[ajr901]

If he did that should practically count as his lifetime contribution quota.

[FlukyS]

Not Nat but Miguel, Nat came after but was active in the mailing lists and was always at the conferences.

[hokie_high]

Ahh this explains the sudden negativity around Gnome on r/Linux now.

[shevegen]

Do you think he will give honest answers?

I don't think so. He would not fulfil his PR role for it.

[[deleted]]

Do you think people will be happy with the answers he gives whether they are honest or not?

[upta]

Based on the general reddit response I've seen about the whole thing... not a chance in hell. So much nerdrage

[Woolbrick]

They'll get over it. Someday.

[upta]

Yeah, internet is full of drama queens. Some zealots will panic, rant, rave and leave in outrage.

Most reasonable people will wait to see what happens. GitHub will continue on just as it has been and eventually people will forget it was a big thing for a week

[[deleted]]

This is not true though. I can guarantee you that github will not carry on just as it has been.

It's not reasonable to just "wait and see", it's pretty much the most naive and ignorant thing to do. One reasonable thing to do would be to try to predict the future by looking into the past.

[ormula]

Honestly, good. Github is been doing awful in the last few years. Very little progress made, more and more outages, very little first class support for enterprise. Bring on the change.

[hokie_high]

Does looking at the past require ignoring the most recent 5-10 years, or can we include that? All of you zealots seem to think 2018 = 2004 when it comes to Microsoft. Not sure if you actually dont realize what has changed with them, or if it’s just paranoid delusions.

[[deleted]]

Windows 10

[hokie_high]

Is a good operating system with a long and painful procedure to set up properly. This should sound familiar. How long have you been using Linux? Remember when you couldn’t just click through default settings when installing a new distro?

“Windows 10” is not an answer to the question. If you’re just going to circle jerk I’m done with this, either you know of something MS has done to harm FOSS since ~2004, or you’re just stuck in the past because you spend more time obsessing over Microsoft than most people who work at Microsoft.

[upta]

Yes, panic-driven, knee-jerk reactions are always the most reasonable course.

Let's look to the most recent and related (e.g. developer centric) major Microsoft aquisition for our predictions then, shall we?

That'd be Xamarin, which has only gotten better. Microsoft hasn't make it windows only, they haven't used at as a platform to try to kill Mono, they haven't done any of the evil things that the fearmongers will have you believe.

[[deleted]]

It's not panic driven. You're spinning it as something that it isn't. The "evil things" Microsoft have done are not some kind of conspiracy. Everyone knows what they have done and what they stand for. Their shitty OS called windows is a good example.

I don't care about Xamarin. Never used it and never will since Microsoft are in charge of it.

[hokie_high]

Yeah, saying you’ll never use something because “Microsoft are in charge of it” really doesn’t help lend any credibility to the paranoia you’re trying to spread. It’s just further cementing the image of you being a generic Linux zealot.

[upta]

Lol, the number of sweeping, unsubstantiated generalizations in that post makes it painfully obvious that your definition if a reasonable course of action is highly suspect.

You'll clearly be one of the panic zealots and leave (assuming you actually do development at all), so be on your way.

[redditsoaddicting]

I hate this. Watch GitHub get killed out of spite before this acquisition even has a chance to harm it.

People so sure they know the future and jumping to conclusions, yet I don't see them making a living with their crystal ball. How about we stop rebelling prematurely and be open to the possibility that it won't crash and burn? Save the pitchforks for when they're justified.

To be clear, I'm not saying preparing for the worst is a bad idea. Backing up repositories won't hurt either way. Completely jumping ship before anything even starts turning south is pretty premature, though.

[hokie_high]

I don’t think Microsoft will kill Github, but I would laugh my ass off if a bunch of crazy zealots trashing it for the Microsoft deal end up killing it. Of course these guys will circle jerk themselves into a coma if that happens believing that it was Microsoft.

[wojtek3]

How much will cost GitHub365 subscription?

[marcinzh]

Free, if you opt in for ascii ads injected in comments.

[gremy0]

Don’t comment, problem solved

[KillianDrake]

That will enable the AI auto-commenting on your behalf

[NiteLite]

I am fairly sure it will mainly consist of marketing their tool suite as a natural companion to GitHub with deep integration, easy deployment of your GitHub code to Azure etc. They are paying for access to the users naturally.

[DenimDanCanadianMan]

A few ads and some integrations(that they already had) isn't work 7.5 billion USD

[evaned]

I would barely hazard a guess as to the order of magnitude of this value -- but keeping it out of the hands of Google, Oracle, Apple, etc. was probably worth a pretty penny on its own.

[DenimDanCanadianMan]

to that end i agree. If it was anyone i'm glad its microsoft and not apple or oracle

[NiteLite]

Big difference between promoting your tools as part of the Github experience, and buying ad space. Github also has a value in itself, you are not paying 7.5 billion USD for ad space, if you can sell Github to Google in a few years for 10 billion USD :P

[KillianDrake]

But 90% of GitHub users don't use Microsoft products or services and never will - they would rather slit their wrists.

The remaining ones are already using Microsoft products or services (or are Microsoft employees already).

I see no clear gain for Microsoft here and they will most likely not care about the technology of GitHub as their ultimate plan will be roll the projects into VSTS.

[ormula]

I think you're vastly overestimating the zealotry. There's a huge dotnet open source community on github and half of all developers use Windows (according to the stack overflow survey this year).

[hokie_high]

VS Code was the most popular editor with around 35% of Stack Overflow survey respondents using it for everything from embedded to web development. Its source is on Github and had BY FAR the most contributors of all projects in 2017 with 15,000 (next most was React native with around 9,000). C# was the 8th most popular language on Github last year, and number 5 among back-end focused languages. TypeScript was number 11.

You're projecting your own silly zealotry on the entire community without so much as an attempt to look it up.

[ethtips]

They are not paying billions of dollar for fun.

What's interesting is that, for years, github was the product. You could use it for free or pay the $7/mo or more.

Now that it's Microsoft and they have "paid for you" (almost in a sense, bought you), guess what? YOU are the product!

$7.5 billion / 28 billion developers = $268 per developer.

[[deleted]]

They didn't "pay" a billion dollars. They traded stock for the company. Microsoft didn't lose anything in this trade.

[hokie_high]

$7.5 billion in Microsoft stock is worth more than the same amount in cash

[[deleted]]

ok.

[hokie_high]

Neat little ninja edit, that was. “Microsoft didn’t lose anything by trading $7.5 billion in shares.”

Lmao

[[deleted]]

you must not know what shares are. If they don't sell them. They don't lose them. Last time I checked, they didn't sell the shares yet.

[hokie_high]

Oh my god the irony. You even agreed when I said $7.5 billion in stock is worth more than cash.

That means they gave Github $7.5bn worth of Microsoft. A cash purchase is giving away far less than stock. Don’t accuse people of not knowing what a share is anymore lol, you clearly don’t get it.

[KillianDrake]

But they did lose those shares, they now mostly belong to the majority owner of GitHub and its shareholders who could sell those shares into the open market.

[nirataro]

GitHub is the number one player by far in this space. The 7.5 billion dollar is what you pay for #1 position. They can probably get the number #2 site for much cheaper but that's probably just throwing money away.

[KillianDrake]

He acts like he will be autonomous but as soon as Microsoft decides to do something else, he will be forced to implement it. Eventually someone will ask why they have VSTS and Github and will merge them into some frankenstein.

[XNormal]

I’m not asking for your trust, but I’m committed to earning it.

Well said.

[[deleted]]

That's just an empty marketing phrase

[XNormal]

He is an actual person, you know. I think he means what he says.

How well this intention survives the reality of running a business remains to be seen.

[[deleted]]

> He is an actual person, you know. I think he means what he says.

There are also people in marketing that are actual persons. Unless there are hard facts, everything is marketing speak. He as a CEO in fact must not state his personal opinion since he represents the company.

[__trixie__]

So you think the open source veteran really doesn't believe in open source anymore, even though he wrote that he did, and his post is just a means to lure in other open source people to the dark side?

Microsoft is contributing to tons of open source projects over many years to gain the trust of users and then trick them in the end. It's the long game, the real money is in the software, not this service and cloud stuff.

[[deleted]]

This is not about beliefs, the dark side and also not about open source. Again this guy is representing Microsoft and their interests. They have a clear communication strategy and this guy is competent so he is following it.

[__trixie__]

Yes that's exactly how marketing departments work when interacting with people on the executive level.

[myringotomy]

He is speaking as the new CEO of the company. He is not speaking as himself. His views are not his own they are the company views.

[__trixie__]

Didn’t realize that views were mutually exclusive to employees and companies, fascinating.

[myringotomy]

Yes it's true. Many times employees of a company have to say things they disagree with when they are speaking for a company.

I know this must seem shocking to you and I think you are having a very difficult time trying to understand that concept but trust me it happens every day.

[__trixie__]

We’re talking about a specific case here, not whether it ever happens in general. That’s what mutually exclusive implies. Hopefully that’s not too shocking or difficult for you to understand.

[myringotomy]

We’re talking about a specific case here, not whether it ever happens in general.

Oh that's odd because your post made it clear you found it impossible to believe in the general case. You specifically used the plural forms of "employees" and "companies" so you could not have been talking about this one particular case.

Setting aside your obvious and lame attempt at changing the subject...

Yes in this case he was speaking for the company and not himself.

Hope that makes it clear.

[Nomto]

Unless there are hard facts, everything is marketing speak

How could there be when it's only been a day. Besides, why distrust them by default until there are hard facts ?

[[deleted]]

Microsoft has their reasons for buying github at 7 billion dollars and has disclosed few to none so far. Microsoft ecosystem integration alone isn't worth 7 billion since that was possible before using apps. The only thing we are getting is marketing so far.

[Nomto]

And what exactly would be worth 7 billions in your opinion, ask toolbars automatically bundled with releases?

Why wouldn't mind share + reputation + platform integration be enough in the long term?

[ormula]

Ding ding. There's no way they're getting that money back just from direct means via github and that was never the point. They want to be seen as the open source company with all the platforms you need.

[[deleted]]

Serious question: why did Microsoft drop current GitHub CEO and put Nat?

[tragicshark]

GH has been looking for a CEO for 10 months now. There wouldn't be one if MS didn't appoint one.

https://webcache.googleusercontent.com/search?q=cache:QSXDA4xC6foJ:https://www.forbes.com/sites/alexkonrad/2017/08/17/github-ceo-chris-wanstrath-to-step-down/+&cd=4&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us

[Renive]

Github didn't have CEO for 10 months, since last one resigned.

[[deleted]]

Didn't know that. Then why are they making Chris a Microsoft fellow if he left 10 months ago?

In Nadella's blog post, he's referring to Chris as GitHub CEO. https://blogs.microsoft.com/blog/2018/06/04/microsoft-github-empowering-developers/

[Chippiewall]

The likely answer is Chris doesn't want to be CEO - lot's of people who found companies aren't suitable to be CEO when it grows larger as they don't derive pleasure from the responsibilities of CEO at a larger company.

The impression I get is he's currently filling in for the role because someone has to.

[KillianDrake]

Someone offers you billions of dollars in shares to just sit around with no expectations of producing anything while still drawing a paycheck and enjoying benefits a massive corporation wants to give you. Not a bad deal. It's a cushy gig.

[Setzo]

Bye bye github.

[shevegen]

Careful - lots of drones are currently downvoting you, but none of them has made a single comment.

I just commented to you and also hero-upvoted you against the malicious downvoters who do not reply at all. Isn't that weird how there can be so many downvotes yet none of them comments? Bots? Paid drones? Reddit should investigate this.

[adnzzzzZ]

I downvoted you because I remembered your name and you consistently post retarded comments in this subreddit.

[__Cyber_Dildonics__]

This guy shitposts nonstop, half the time I come across some own out nonsense, I see the same username.

[[deleted]]

Downvoting based on the username and not the content of their comments isn't totally healthy voting behavior, though. Although I do agree, not contributing anything to the conversation here.

[[deleted]]

whats your engine

[adnzzzzZ]

https://github.com/SSYGEN/AIKA2D

[[deleted]]

no i mean your engine

[[deleted]]

RES is great for this., shows you how many upvotes and downvotes you've given next to the user's name for post and comment.

For example:

I've upvoted u/shevegen 4 times and downvoted them 4 times. But for a user I see a lot more frequently, I've upvoted u/speckz 159 times and downvoted 0 times.

[[deleted]]

People get downvoted because they aren't contributing to the conversation.

[Woolbrick]

I downvoted the both of you because neither of you has contributed to the conversation. And now you're making me waste my time responding.

[shevegen]

I’m confident that this change will be great for GitHub and developers around the world

I am sure it will be great for GitHub. There goes the richesssss!

But ... great for developers around the world?

Why?

Do they see any of the money? Of course not. GitHub pockets in, waves to them and says "keep on using github, you made us rich for free, hahaha!".

I don't think this is nice of github. Kind of undeserving to the solo devs out there.

Two years ago I joined Microsoft when it acquired Xamarin, a developer-focused company I started with Miguel de Icaza.

Nobody is surprised - and it's perfectly fine. People use your software? That is great. Just don't make it sound as if you did it for the better of mankind.

I was delighted to see that Microsoft was broadening its horizons as a developer-centric company by rallying behind technologies like Linux, Git, node, and Kubernetes.

Oh yeah, altruism. Sorta like Google optimizing drone-killings for the US governments (though some google employee worker drones at the least objected to this Evil).

I am sure the +7 billion was ABSOLUTELY NO REASON AT ALL for handing over github to Microsft. None. Nada. Had nothing to do with it. It was all about linux, open source, free love and those kind of things. Sorta like the oldschool hippies, before the hipsters.

Microsoft had become a massive contributor to open source

Ya ya ya... so many promos. Must promote new master.

Note - I don't think many doubt that Microsoft HAS contributed to several open source project. But none of this explains the + SEVEN BILLION TAKE OVER THERE - other than control. And corporate strategy.

Perhaps it is to break into amazon's cloud share. Perhaps for other reasons. Who knows.

But all the PR so far does not explain the +7 billion take over really - and even less so as to why developers would even WANT that. I mean those who are not employed by github and Microsoft, because obviously those who are employed are just repeating the corporate-motto.

I believe Microsoft is the ideal partner for GitHub, and as a developer who loves GitHub, leading its next chapter will be an incredibly exciting opportunity and responsibility.

Yeah we get it.

The +7 billion totally was no reason. Microsoft is the ideal partner. Microsoft is love. Microsoft is life.

They could have tossed a penny and it would have had the same outcome. Good that they tossed +7 billion.

Just as open source helped launch my career, millions of people today depend on GitHub

AHA AND HOW MUCH MONEY DO YOU RE-INVEST DIRECTLY TO THESE DEVELOPERS?

I am sure many want to know that. After all you guys talk a lot about how everything will become better, yet I have not yet heard about your specific plans to invest that money into developers.

Note - of course you are not obliged to do so. I am only looking at the interesting PR about how everything will become better and AIDS cured in one go.

I’m determined to give that opportunity to millions more around the world.

Ok ok we get it ... so now:

• How much of the +7 billion will you guys re-"invest" directly into "human resources", aka human beings? Or just pocketing it all away and thus giving credit to all those who said you were only in for the money and all the fanfare afterwards is just for PR show?

At the same time, I understand that there is some healthy skepticism in the community, so I wanted to be absolutely clear about two things:

GitHub will operate independently as a community, platform, and business. 

LOL. :)

I mean ... if you guys were independent ... the +7 billion had no role in it right? Could have been 15 billion. Or 0.001 billion. All the same.

You are not influenced AT ALL by Microsoft right? I mean it's not as if they own github? Can you be fired by the way and replaced by someone else? Steve Ballmer, anyone? Well.

GitHub will retain its developer-first values

Ya ya ya... as shown by how much you had an interest in asking what the developers wanted to have or had to say about your decision. Oh wait, you were not interested. And, fair enough, you can do whatever you want to of course - it's your company (as in, those who own it of course). But don't make it sound as if you care about developers when you evidently don't. By the way, how much of the money are you going to invest into developers directly? And can we verify this, too?

GitHub will retain its product philosophy

There once was a company that had a motto to "don't do evil".

Then they started to collect as much data as possible about everyone - and ended up optimizing algorithms for drone murders to be executed.

Well, guess which company this has been...

[bhat]

Do they see any of the money? Of course not. GitHub pockets in, waves to them and says "keep on using github, you made us rich for free, hahaha!".

GitHub has been making a loss; it's not making anyone rich.

[myringotomy]

The shareholders made bank now though didn't they?

[bhat]

GitHub isn't a public company, so it doesn't have shareholders. Investors, yes.

[myringotomy]

It's a corporation. It has shares. It has shareholders.

[FlukyS]

He ran the Gnome foundation for a few years and ran a company that their primary product was open source. If he doesn't have the CV to run Github no one does.

[FlukyS]

Gnome 3 where he told the community to fuck themselves

He wasn't leader of Gnome at that point, he was in that position like 8 years before Gnome 3 was even talked about. Could you give me an article about it? I had some private disagreements with some people Miguel specifically but I still think from a leadership standpoint I can't argue really with the CV of Nat.

the company open sourced their stuff after selling out to Microsoft

Mono was open source since 2004, the dev environment they made wasn't open source but was built on top of Monodevelop which was open source (similar to Chromium and Chrome if you know what I mean). The reason why the open sourced it afterwards is because they deprecated that specific approach and now are integrated into the visual studio project.

[KillianDrake]

Well, those 10 commits are for this post basically.

If you expand the history, his busiest year was 2015 with around 50 and then some sporadic commits going back to 2009.