back to article Pull request accepted: You want to buy GitHub, Microsoft? Go for it – EU

The European Commission has given the thumbs up to Microsoft’s acquisition of GitHub. The EU took a look at the deal and concluded that, yup, everything would be fine and dandy. It observed that “Microsoft would have no incentive to undermine the open nature of GitHub's platform”, something that Microsoft is all too aware of …

  1. Ian 55
    WTF?

    I missed the story back in June

    $7.5 beeeeeeellion?!? WTFF?!?

  2. jglathe

    Doesn't mean they don't shoot themselves in the foot

    The have a rich history of doing just that.

    1. Steve Davies 3 Silver badge
      Coat

      Re: Doesn't mean they don't shoot themselves in the foot

      Or alternatively,

      Another nail in the coffin of GitHub.

      and other phrases.

      It would be nice to come back to this story in say three years and revisit it and compare it to what MS has done to GitHub in the meantime.

      Perhaps they'll just kill it and rename Sharepoint - GitHub V2.0 (shudder)

      Coat it a copy of my code on Paper Tape in the pocket.

      {I found the paper tape copy of my degree project code from 7BPC (before the PC era) a couple of months ago}

    2. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Doesn't mean they don't shoot themselves in the foot

      It could be beneficial - GitHub became a de facto monopoly, as most other code repositories were shut down - because it looks today developers just flock to the same place as if they feel ashamed of not being in the fashionable place everybody else talk about - as "social networks" have brainwashed them.

      So if other competing repositories arise, even if just because the usual hate for MS, maybe is better. Just, I'm sure one will become fashionable again and everybody and their dog will flock to. Rinse and repeat.

      Just, those same people should stop babbling about the "distributed nature of the internet, and its freedom".

  3. BeerParty

    New name?

    So, who is running the pool for the new name after MS takes the first step by 're-branding' GitHub?

    I want to claim 'GitSoft'! Though 'MsHub' and 'GitMs' do seem more likely...

    1. Ramlen

      Re: New name?

      I am thinking VisualGit or VisualSourcePlatform...

      1. katrinab Silver badge

        Re: New name?

        I’m thinking OneDrive for Developers.

    2. Someone Else Silver badge
      Coat

      Re: New name?

      I like the one proffered in the article: MicroGit.

      Irony can be so ironic....

    3. Wade Burchette

      Re: New name?

      GitLost!

    4. Mark 85
      Coat

      Re: New name?

      Though 'MsHub' and 'GitMs' do seem more likely...

      Wishing people a "Merry GitMs" might be fashionable. I'll get my coat....

    5. Roger Greenwood

      Re: New name?

      SoftGit

    6. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: New name?

      My prediction is:

      Microsoft Surface 10 .NET

      1. Teiwaz

        Re: New name?

        My prediction is:

        Microsoft Surface 10 .NET

        I looked at that and thought.

        Micorsoft Surface 10 .GIT

  4. JWLong

    How about........

    GitShit?

    1. RegGuy1 Silver badge

      Re: How about........

      or the other way round,

      ShitGit

      as that is undoubtedly what it will become.

      1. bombastic bob Silver badge
        Devil

        Re: How about........

        LinkdIn has become a bit Micro-shafty, but otherwise isn't as bad as I feared it could become. Still, I'll only run it from a sandbox'd browser. Too much script anyway. Not enough compelling reasons to kill a LinkedIn profile that I established a decade or so ago...

        and I see the same with GitHub. Micro-shaft's influence on THAT will probably be obvious, and I suspect they may do things with it that are mildly irritating, but as long as I can use the legacy tools to do push/pull and clone, I'll just continue to do that.

        But, if editing issues or the wiki forces me into an Office 365 environment, I'll terminate my repos and tell them how far they can insert their service into their collective rectums! Similarly if the github login causes me to be tracked, or to a lesser extent, if the site simply won't work with 'noscript' loaded.

        1. Teiwaz

          Re: How about........

          LinkdIn has become a bit Micro-shafty

          Are you kidding? It's become much, much worse.

          Granted, most of that is the creepy desperate wanna-look-like-a well-connected-businessperson-so-bad types running round trying to collect profiles 10 year olds with a terminal Top-Trumps card habit.

          But I'm sure the service harassment itself is Microsfoots drive to 'maximise site traffic returns' (or some grabage).

          It's almost more creepy than Faecebook and far more dull.

      2. onefang

        Re: How about........

        We played this name game in the other articles, I think El Reg even asked in the first one. There are already pages and pages of suggestions, duplicating some of the above suggestions.

  5. A-nonCoward
    FAIL

    Reaaaaaally...

    “if Microsoft screws this up, we will lose the trust of developers for a generation”

    Microsoft "screw ups" are totally by design.

    Real developers know that, otherwise, that "trust" (?) would have been lost a couple generations ago (am I that old? yes).

    As the accountant at the school I used to work at said, "my computer is getting more and more slow, maybe I need the new version of Windows."

  6. Mike Lewis

    Perhaps I'm too cautious but...

    I figure it's only a matter of time before the more useful bits of private GitHub projects start turning up in Microsoft software or as Microsoft products.

    1. John Brown (no body) Silver badge

      Re: Perhaps I'm too cautious but...

      They can already do that with open source code and probably have been since forever.

      It's quite likely that most closed source code has chunks of open source mixed in, whether it breaks licence conditions or not. After all, who's going to know?

      Yes, I know you can do code fingerprinting on object code, but I doubt most people would be daft enough to just steal wholesale. Different compilers, different compiler settings and re-jigging the code to work the "corporate way" would probably hide most of it.)

    2. AlbertH

      Re: Perhaps I'm too cautious but...

      I figure it's only a matter of time before the more useful bits of private GitHub projects start turning up in Microsoft software or as Microsoft products.

      That's why I've pulled down everything I've ever put on GitHub. I'm now looking for a collaborative repository that isn't infected by M$.

      1. John Brown (no body) Silver badge

        Re: Perhaps I'm too cautious but...

        "That's why I've pulled down everything I've ever put on GitHub. "

        Does Github take backups? How far back to the archived backups go?

    3. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Perhaps I'm too cautious but...

      a matter of time before the more useful bits of private GitHub projects start turning up in Microsoft software

      That would imply changes to Microsoft software bring benefits to users. I'm still waiting on that, after some decades. Microsoft borg all manner of software, and then put both bug fixes and useful development into stasis. I think perhaps you meant a matter of time before unwanted, unasked for, partially functional bugware from GitHub projects starts turning up in Microsoft bloatware

  7. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    > I'm now looking for a collaborative repository that isn't infected by M$.

    You'll need to host your own instance. Gitea and Gogs are decent.

  8. Anonymous Coward
    Anonymous Coward

    Now that have it cleared, how about they sort out the official MS GitHub plugins for Visual Code? They're a joke compared to something like SourceTree.

  9. AlanS

    Contestable monopolies

    So the Commission reckons that if MS screw up GitHub, someone can easily create a competitor, but do not accept that Google search has an effective monopoly just because it works, not because no one can establish a competitor? I write as one who, when Yahoo and Google first established themselves in the UK, much preferred Yahoo, but after a few years, Google got better and Yahoo didn't.

    1. Anonymous Coward
      Anonymous Coward

      Re: Contestable monopolies

      So the Commission reckons that if MS screw up GitHub, someone can easily create a competitor, but do not accept that Google search has an effective monopoly just because it works, not because no one can establish a competitor? I write as one who, when Yahoo and Google first established themselves in the UK, much preferred Yahoo, but after a few years, Google got better and Yahoo didn't.

      It's all smoke and mirrors. It's all about how the EU can maximise revenue in the form of fines or ongoing taxes. It just cloaks it in 'making competition fair'.

      But then most countries are playing the same game. Nothing is as it seems.

    2. Korev Silver badge

      Re: Contestable monopolies

      Once upon a time Sourceforge was approaching a monopoly; then the owner made some bad decisions and now many use Github. Developers could always move on again.

  10. Buzzword

    Microsoft had CodePlex

    Microsoft already had a popular open source code repository, in the form of CodePlex. What happened? Benign neglect, until all the users shuffled over to GitHub.

  11. Jay Lenovo
    Angel

    I bought your favorite meeting place, so now we gotta hang out together, right?

    Similar price as what they paid for Nokia.

    You don't spend that kind of money for failure, or maybe you can?

  12. SeanEllis

    "Microsoft would have no incentive to undermine the open nature of GitHub's platform”

    Microsoft had no incentive to undermine the user experience in Skype, either, but they went ahead and did it anyway, despite repeated warnings from the serious user base.

    Fingers crossed that the Microsoft GitHub team are sensible enough not to succumb to the curse of the mobile phone UI paradigm.

  13. Multivac

    Presumably there is going to be a git agent shipped on all future versions of Windows that works with Github but oddly won't work with Gitlab?

POST COMMENT House rules

Not a member of The Register? Create a new account here.

  • Enter your comment

  • Add an icon

Anonymous cowards cannot choose their icon

Other stories you might like