Do you use Discord? Well if these reports are to be trusted, it looks like they might get a new owner under Microsoft.
In an article on Bloomberg which cites anonymous sources "familiar with the matter", Microsoft are apparently in talks to buy Discord for more than $10 billion USD. This follows from another article from VentureBeat that claims Discord has been exploring options for a sale and has "signed an exclusive acquisition discussion with one party". Earlier this month the WSJ talked about how Discord revenue has increased quite a lot to $130 million in 2020 (up from $45 million in 2019) but it's not actually profitable yet.
For the Linux support of Discord, if Microsoft did acquire it we don't expect much to change. Discord's Linux client is full of issues that never get solved so Microsoft can't do much worse - we could even see an improvement perhaps. Nowadays Microsoft aren't exactly the same when it comes to Linux with the likes of Teams, Visual Studio Code and Edge all on Linux in some form. Microsoft are also the owners of GitHub which huge parts of the open source community entirely rely on.
Still, with all the acquisitions Microsoft has done, that's a lot to have under a single roof. This continued consolidation across the gaming industry is pretty concerning. Some companies really do end up with far too much influence and power.
How do you feel about this?
Article taken from GamingOnLinux.com.
Quoting: EhvisWhile I'm in no way trusting Microsoft on what they would try to do with regard to privacy. I'm not actually sure I would trust Discord itself any more than that as it is now. There is a reason why I only run this thing in complete isolation. It doesn't even have access to snoop on my running processes. And otherwise I regard it as a public discussion forum.
The lack of isolation and its built-in process snooping is one of the key reasons I gave up on the fat-client experience. But while I'm sure they'd love to snoop processes on non-Windows machines, I suspect that this move is more to get rid of competition from Teams. And my god Teams is so bad, this is the only way it'll succeed (speaking as an 8 hours a day Teams user at my work).
They tried to buy Slack before. I wonder if they'll try again?
Quoting: Whitewolfe80Ahh electron app incoming
It's already an electron app.
Personally I've not touched it since they switched to GTK3 builds.
Last edited by WorMzy on 23 March 2021 at 12:20 pm UTC
Quoting: RoosterFortunately there are more than enough good alternatives for Discord, in case they screw it up.Honestly Mumble should be used by everyone on Linux. Unfortunately server setup and lack of better chat options is holding it back.
Skype, Skype for business, teams... How many apps do they have to crapify to be satisfied. I can't wrap my head around how M$ ruins everything it touches. And they even hire good engineers. How is this even possible.
Arehandoro Mar 23, 2021
I use it begrudgingly, and because most people don't care about these things or simply try to mock you if you mention Matrix or Mumble.
M$ are way too hungry of individual data regardless of privacy, besides they haven't done much shit for either Linux or FOSS, au contraire.
oldominion Mar 23, 2021
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