Whilst this really doesn't effect anything I do -- NOT a fan of version control since it seems to have made project managers no longer do their damned jobs and basically destroyed actual communication between developers -- all I can say is it could be far, FAR worse.
As companies that swallow up others go, in the grand scheme of things Microsoft is actually relatively benign. I mean sure Connectix' product line got back-seated and the one real remaining tech (virtual PC) is a joke... and don't get be started about Hotmail...
But this is NOTHING compared to someone like Adobe, Symantec, or the king of half-assed mismanaged takeover cock-ups, Oracle.
I mean when Adobe does it, it's usually to either bury a competitor -- or more likely bury their own product and rebrand the competitor under their own name. See what they did with Aldus and Macromedia.
When Symantec does it, it's for a quick name recognition cash grab so they can use/abuse every last dollar of it with zero investment, then spend decades coasting on the name... Powerquest, Nortons, etc, etc... Remember when Partition Magic was good?
But those didn't deal with Open Source... Oracle's back-to-back acquisitions of MySQL and Sun on the other hand proved just three things...
1) Oracle only cared about Sun's virtualization tech.
2) They were buying up possible competitors to bury them
3) Oracle clearly doesn't understand what Open Source is.
That's why OpenOffice is for all intents and purposes dead with anyone with a brain using the LibreOffice fork (which is finally ripping out all the Java crap), That's why Solaris is for all intents and purposes DONE, and it's why most of you right now are likely using MariaDB instead of mySQL and DON'T EVEN REALIZE IT!
Seriously, most web hosts setting up new servers are installing MariaDB and not even telling you it's not mySQL. You'd almost think the past four years of howToForge tutorials no longer even bother providing mySQL installation instructions. NOT that I'm saying many major hosting companies and most smaller ones just blindly follow howToForge's tutorials... No, wait, that's EXACTLY what I'm saying.
Oracle did everything they could to alienate the people working on the Open Source IP's they gobbled up... which is why those developers almost universally screamed "Yeah, well fork you!"
Given the HISTORY of such buyouts I can understand why those who use it are now looking for alternatives like Gitlab or Go.io. Same as how I switched to "Private Internet Access" the MOMENT I heard that TunnelBear was bought up by Symantec.
There is a fundamental lack of trust when it comes to these large companies gobbling up smaller project. If not for Microsoft's reputation alone, then for the general history of such transitions.
In M$ defense though I'm not sold that this is done with malice, or for a cheap cash-grab to name-coast something existing into the ground. That generally is NOT their mode of operation and in recent years they've been much more friendly towards the development community.
We make fun of Ballmer for "Developers, Developers, Developers, Developers" but it's a sentiment you'll find in damned few companies. Github is a development tool that if that mentality is still maintained could work out well in the long run.
Their FINALLY embracing outside tools for creation of products I think indicates this could work out well. Look no further than Visual Studio Code -- they HAVE in-house tools galore: .NET, the UWP platform, they've embraced mono and opened up large swaths of the .NET codebase to make mono work better on non M$ OS platforms, and they have their own "chakra" stack for building web stack applications, and an endless array of languages including their own in-house developed C#... so when it came time to make a cross-platform editor/IDE for developers what did they use?
Electron, an open source node.js implementation with Blink sitting atop it. Basically Chromium in reverse... browser engine on JS instead of JS on browser engine
THAT is a change in direction that we can only hope their takeover of github will follow.
Time will tell... and if they screw it up it's not like there aren't alternatives that will step up to the plate.
Though I am having a good chuckle at some of the "Church of Stallman" FLOSS fanboys running around like the sky is falling