Microsoft Acquires Github for $7.5 billion

Microsoft's Github acquisition

Microsoft has confirmed its acquisition of Github. Microsoft is paying $7.5 billion in stock for the code repository service.

This is the second big acquisition of Microsoft under the Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella. Before this, Satya Nadella also led the Linkedin acquisition for $26.2 billion.

“Microsoft is a developer-first company, and by joining forces with GitHub we strengthen our commitment to developer freedom, openness and innovation,” Microsoft chief executive Satya Nadella said in a statement.

GitHub´s current chief executive, Chris Wanstrath, will move to Microsoft as a technical fellow and will start working on strategic software initiatives.

Wanstrath said that he “could have never imagined news of such a merger, when open source and business were considered as different ‘as oil and water’ a decade ago.”

GitHub is a code repository that is popular among developers and companies hosting entire projects and codes. There are around 85 million repositories hosted on GitHub and over 28 million developers contribute to them. Apple, Amazon, Google, and many other big tech companies use GitHub for hosting their projects and codes.

Microsof killed its own Github competition Codeplex back in December and started using Github. It is also the top contributor to Github and has over 1000 employees actively pushing code to GitHub repositories. So, this acquisition really makes sense.

This acquisition is not going to be as easy as Microsoft things. Developers have already started voicing their concerns about Microsoft’s past abuses. GitLab, a GitHub competitor, claims it has seen a 10x increase in the amount of developers moving their repositories from Github to Gitlab.

Even if developers are not happy, there are also many reasons to see this as a positive news for GitHub users. Microsoft has recently started focusing on open source technologies. It has open sourced PowerShell, Visual Studio Code, and the Microsoft Edge JavaScript engine. It has also partnered with Canonical to bring Ubuntu to Windows 10, and acquired Xamarin.

Microsoft is not the same Microsoft anymore. It struggled with developers in past but has spent recent years in improving a lot to give developers something fruitful. Its Visual Studio got attention of developers in recent years.

Microsoft has bought Github for turning Microsoft into a more developer-friendly place. Github will be a separate entity and I hope Microsoft will not try to make it money making machine by ruining experience.

Microsoft is also expecting a negative impact on its 2019 earning after this acquisition but is hopeful for positive beginning in 2020.

Share this article
Shareable URL
Prev Post

Apple introduces macOS Mojave with several new features

Next Post

Zebronics Smart Time 200 Smartwatch with camera Launched for Rs. 2999

Leave a Reply
Read next
Subscribe to our newsletter
Get notified of the best deals on our WordPress themes.
1
Share