On Wed, Jun 06, 2018 at 04:54:59AM +0100, Mark Rousell wrote: [cut]
> > All the same, a relatively young, very fast-growing company like GitHub > might well be expected to burn through cash (thus wiping out any profit > that would otherwise have been made) at an eye-watering rate. However, > that means that eventually new cash has to come from somewhere, such as > (more) VC funding, an IPO, or a sale of the business. It seems that a > sale of the business was what the owners chose. > > My guess is that they liked Nadella more than they liked Microsoft and > its history. > My guess is that (former) GitHub owners simply liked the 9-digit figure on the check, and didn't pay much attention to whom was signing it. They would have sold as easily to Amazon or Google or Apple or IBM or Facebook. As Latins said "pecunia non olet"...[0] This is absolutely normal in business, but please, don't try to convince us that it's great, or good, or a fantastic opportunity for the free software community. Microsoft has never given a shit about the free software community, except for repeatedly noticing that Microsoft's business had been profoundly harmed by the sole existence of a community that preaches that software and ideas should be available to everybody, and that one of Microsoft's primary missions was to extinguish that "cancer". Companies don't change. Microsoft was founded by the same person who wrote the worst example of "letter to a community" in the whole history of computers [1]. Nadella does not change anything, especially because he could be easily replaced tomorrow with another Gates on another Ballmer, or worse, and Microsoft won't ask you if you like it or not, or if it's good or not for the free software community or for GitHub. And just as a final remark: my "hatred" against Microsoft is not "blind" (which would imply being irrational and unmotivated). I simply don't believe in companies doing any good for a community. Companies do good only for themselves, and when they decide to "embrace" a community is only and exculively to exploit it for the company's benefit. There is no single example that goes in another direction, and no, Ubuntu is not the exception. You are free to like the "new" Microsoft, but please do not whine if other people like me think it's a very stupid thing to do. We don't need to agree, and we can't both be right :) HND KatolaZ [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pecunia_non_olet [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_Letter_to_Hobbyists -- [ ~.,_ Enzo Nicosia aka KatolaZ - Devuan -- Freaknet Medialab ] [ "+. katolaz [at] freaknet.org --- katolaz [at] yahoo.it ] [ @) http://kalos.mine.nu --- Devuan GNU + Linux User ] [ @@) http://maths.qmul.ac.uk/~vnicosia -- GPG: 0B5F062F ] [ (@@@) Twitter: @KatolaZ - skype: katolaz -- github: KatolaZ ]
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