Microsoft snaps up GitHub

© iStock, GitHub.

Microsoft has reached an agreement worth 7.5 billion dollars with GitHub, the source code repository and collaborative software development platform. The all-stock deal should close by the end of the year, subject to regulatory approval in the US and the EU. Since its inception in 2008, GitHub has become an open source place, with countless software projects using GitHub repositories as a place to publish their code, including Microsoft projects like the editor Visual Studio Code and the .NET runtime. In total, 28 million developers use GitHub, depositing in 85 million sets of code. Microsoft says it will retain GitHub’s status as an open platform for all open source projects, keeping it agnostic toward programming languages and development tools. The announcement, while generally favorably received, did leave some developers skeptical, raising suspicion about Microsoft and its motives. Indeed, some open-source developers worry about the future of the platform, recalling Steve Ballmer’s comparison of Linux to cancer. Some of them still believe Microsoft to be the Devil itself, even though the company has changed considerably since Satya Nadella’s takeover in 2014.

⇨ Ars Technica, “Microsoft snaps up GitHub for $7.5 billion.”