I feel like this misses the mark slightly: Microsoft owns Github now, in precisely the same way that Melon Husk owns Xitter. Microsoft didn't "fail upwards" with github, they used the power of unforgivably offensive amounts of capital to make a purchase of an already-extremely-profitable company, in order to ensure that all of Microsoft's other software dingleberries, hanging from the fetid prolapse that is their own company, continue to hang on and accomplish the only two things they care about:

1. that the girth of their proverbial ass does not decrease (and thus continue to keep every market they can firmly under its weight)

And

2. that its stench continues poisoning the well for anything that could potentially compete with them.

With these two feats accomplished, they can keep their monopoly going.