On Monday, 4 June 2018 at 20:00:45 UTC, Maksim Fomin wrote:
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.
I just finished reading this interesting article by a former
Microsoft business guy, which makes the same point I did, that MS
is unlikely to neglect github or otherwise force it in some
direction to leverage it:
https://stratechery.com/2018/the-cost-of-developers/
You're right that MS has had many acquisitions go badly already,
such as Nokia and Skype (though I'd argue both were long-term
doomed before they were bought), but, as always, incompetence is
the much more likely reason than malice.
