GitHub could be acquired by Microsoft

[Maksim Fomin]

On Monday, 4 June 2018 at 19:26:23 UTC, Joakim wrote:
> On Monday, 4 June 2018 at 19:06:52 UTC, Maksim Fomin wrote:
>
> Unlikely, you don't spend $7.5 billion on a company because you 
> want to send a message that you're a good dev tools company, 
> then neglect it.

You have no idea about how big corporations' management spends 
money.
As with Nokia and Skype - I don't know whether it was initially a 
plan to destroy products or management was just silly.

> I suggest you look at their online slides linked from the 
> Nadella blog post to see their stated plan, such as integrating 
> github into VS Code more:
>
> http://aka.ms/ms06042018
>
> and likely vastly overpaid for an unprofitable company in the 
> first place

:) this is exactly how such deals are done - paying $7.5 bl. for 
nonprofitable company.
Unfortunately, their books are unavailable because they are 
private company, but scarce information in the web suggests that 
in most of their years they have losses.

Just as rough estimate: to support $7.5 bl valuation Microsoft 
must turn -$30 ml. net loss company into business generating 
around $750 ml. for many years. There is no way to get these 
money from the market. Alternatively, the project can have payoff 
if something is broken and Microsoft cash flows increase by $750 
ml. This is more likely...

> but they emphasize that they intend to keep github open and 
> independent.

They can claim anything which suits best their interests right 
now. Or, as alternative, github can be broken in a such way, that 
their promises on surface are kept. Business is badly compatible 
with opensource by design.