“Microsoft + Github = Empowering Developers” is a JOKE!

When I read this news a few days back, I couldn’t understand why everybody was celebrating it. This is not a reason to celebrate, folks. It’s actually a huge disaster for open source community. Every time a big company buys a small, rising company, they destroy it. History is littered with examples of this, you don’t have to look too hard.

So I wasn’t really buying this whole “Microsoft loves open-source” crap. The only thing on my mind was “WHY?” I was looking for a legit reason as to why Microsoft would want to buy Github. Generally, businesses only buy other businesses to benefit themselves. That’s how it works. So why would Microsoft do this?

Possible Real Reasons

I’m sure many people are wondering the same thing, so let’s talk about a few possible reasons.

1. Developers are the next big customers: In case you haven’t noticed, this new marketing campaign is just about open-source. Why? Let’s face it — engineers are a huge market. Operating systems like Ubuntu and MacOS are most popular among developers, and this campaign is all about attracting those developers. Open source is what attracts developers the most. And what’s the biggest repository management system for all the open source projects in world? That’s right, GITHUB.
2. Meta data of Github: So if developers are the next big market, then Microsoft would surely want to create some big products for them. In today’s world, if you want to create a successful product, you need data to predict market trends and act accordingly. What’s the best way to get this data? Yep, it’s GITHUB. Github is most popular and most used platform among developers. It can easily predict market trends for Microsoft. That’s one incredibly powerful tool in their arsenal now.
3. REMEMBER THAT CODE STEALING PIECE OF SHIT AI?!!: If you remember, a year ago this article was going viral, named “Microsoft’s AI writes code by looting other software”. Well, here’s what they had to say about their AI:

“DeepCoder is only tackling the “simplest problems” in coding. We foresee many extensions of DeepCoder… and are optimistic about the future prospects of using machine learning to synthesize programs.”

That’s just code (forgive the pun) for solving more complicated problems by being able to steal more complicated code in the future. We all know that a machine learning program needs a large, rich set of data to work properly by learning progressively complex tasks. And how’s Microsoft going to acquire that rich data set? Yep, you guessed it. GITHUB!

So I don’t understand the hype about “Microsoft + Github = Empowering Developers”, because if you ask me, this is actually alarming. Microsoft is definitely planning to release a suite of big, expensive software for developers in the future, or even worse — releasing one to replace the developers themselves. Devs who’re smart enough to know this are already shifting their code to other platforms. As stated by Founder of Gitlab, Sijbrandij (see here):

The platform has imported here over a hundred thousand code projects and has seen a seven-fold rise in orders since the Microsoft-GitHub deal unfolded.

Let’s hope I’m wrong and this deal can actually benefit us developers, but so far in my experience, I haven’t had any reason to be that optimistic. That’s just not how business works. 😉

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