I’m not a MS fan in any way. I have built several havkintoshes and have owned Apple products since the Apple IIc (friends had the IIe).
So why blow all that cash on GitHub?
It really seems retarded but I’m thinking a big part of this was customer acquisition. But GitHub is basically free and their paying customers could keep GitHub going. True but lots of GitHub users pay for services the check their code or deploy across various machines.
I use VSTS to listen to my GitHub repo, I make a commit, VSTS takes my code, applies what ever I need to make my code server ready, and then puts my code on what ever machine I have given VSTS access too. I can drop code into my dev environment and if it goes green it drops code into a user testing location and even later into production. The pipeline features are awesome.
Ok VSTS is cool so what!
Don’t forget that azure competes with Amazon AWS and other places. Windows server is ok but ... is it that much better than Apache or nginx? I dont Think so.
Lots of corporations are going to the cloud and MS is on this game pretty well. They might have fucked their phone real bad but not the cloud.
So does GitHub make any sense now?
I have a feeling they are beefing up their vertical line. From lines of code to full services on their stack within their stack. If you can keep GitHub rolling like it was before the SJW day’s then people will look at VSTS because it is good. Once they have this and realize azure is just as good as AWS, they will stick with the honey smooth transition. Does this mean more windows sales? I doubt it. I don’t think they care really. They are looking enterprise and corporations.
So does their purchase make sense? Yeah, I think it does. Could they have built their own GitHub? Of course but who would use it?
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[–] cdglow 0 points 2 points 2 points (+2|-0) ago
The innocent explanation is that this is their attempt to buy developer goodwill for all of their platforms and services. Having some good relations with developers is critical for Microsoft in the long run, and this is a weakness of theirs. GitHub isn’t going to make Microsoft tons of cash by their standards, but it could hypothetically build towards making them somewhat less hated and more respected over time as they use Github to reinforce their brand and subtly push their products.
There are other more cynical and conspiratorial explanations obviously: like using this as a platform to inject code into NSA/CIA targets and spread government backdoors. Even if people check the hash of a file they download, it does no good if the hash is altered, so yeah.
[–] WhiteRonin [S] ago
Good will is a yes. It also helps to up sell developers to azure.
Code injection? Really?!? If your project is active, you will catch this shit the first time you do: git push origin master (or whatever branch you are working on). What will happen is that you will be warned and have to do a pull and merge your code. And bingo! Busted.
So no. This is highly unlikely. Checking a file hash only helps to ensure code came from XYZ source. But if the source is corrupted, hash helps zero.
[–] 12984024? 1 point 0 points 1 point (+1|-1) ago
They already have developer good will. Nobody makes better developer tools than they do
[–] WhiteRonin [S] 1 point -1 points 0 points (+0|-1) ago
I hate MS. I like VSTS, VSC and Excel. I do sort of like IIS and how you can change server settings on the fly. Do a release through VSTS and you can script hundreds of servers without thinking. Good stuff.
I don’t do .net so Visual Studio is lost on me plus I hate the interface. Boring and seriously boring compared to VSC. Like what the fuck!?!
Visio ... hmmm ... I’d rather whip out illustrator. But I do like you can use tabs.