Microsoft Git-Hub Hub-Bub 🙀

The developer community is divided over Microsoft's purchase of GitHub.  In simple terms, it's closed source versus open source.  ArsTechnica's take is that GitHub had no good alternative, but some developers are having none of that, and are actively exploring options such as GitLab and BitBucket.

For perspective though, and at the risk of sounding like your high school English teacher, read the following articles on Steve Ballmer and Satya Nadella.  Compare and contrast.

Vanity Fair 2012:
Ballmer and Microsoft’s Lost Decade

Wired 2017:
Bill Gates and Steve Ballmer were more than their sums.  Together, they made Microsoft formidable and feared.  Alone, however, Ballmer was a functional CEO, executing in the present, but unable to take Microsoft into the future.

Nadella came from within the ranks of Microsoft, and given the complexity of the company, an insider for CEO was a good thing.  A telling and significant move was that Nadella allowed software -- Microsoft Office -- to run on Apple's iPad.  Ballmer would never have approved this.

To appreciate just how important this was, go back to a time when Apple was the underdog to Microsoft, circa 2000.  Steve Jobs gave his Apple Computers the ability to read PC formatted disks.  A small thing, but he knew the importance of building bridges.  This was followed by a bigger bridge: the Mac Mini.  Then came Boot Camp.

Nadella is not Steve Jobs.  Like Jobs, though, he knows when he is the underdog.





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