GitHub could be acquired by Microsoft

[Nick Sabalausky (Abscissa)]

On 06/08/2018 01:01 AM, H. S. Teoh wrote:
> but the valuable associated information like PR
> discussions is specific to Github and there is no easy way (if there's a
> way at all!) to export this data and import it elsewhere.

For importing, you may be right. For exporting, I'm not sure I agree. 
With curl and something like Adam's HTML DOM (or heck, even just regex) 
it shouldn't be too difficult to crawl/scrape all the information into a 
sensible format. That's a technique I've been wanting to do a LOT more 
with than I've had a chance to.

Although granted, that's still far more complicated than it SHOULD be, 
and doesn't help much if there's nowhere to import it into.

> It's 2018, and history has shown that standard, open data formats are
> what stands the test of time.

Yup. Unfortunately, history has also shown that closed-off and locked-in 
tend to be more lucrative business models. Which is why all the big 
muscle in the tech world is usually working *against* open standards.