Microsoft this morning announced the purchase of source code repository GitHub for $7.5 billion in Microsoft stock. While rumors have been circulating since Friday, today is the first official confirmation that the acquisition is taking place.
According to Microsoft’s announcement, the purchase still has to go through regulatory review and the normal closing process, but it is expected to close by the end of the year. Post-closing, Microsoft Corporate VP and Xamarin founder Nat Friedman will assume the role of GitHub CEO and current GitHub CEO Chris Wanstrath will become a Microsoft Tech Fellow and work on other software initiatives. .
“Microsoft is a developer-centric company, and by joining forces with GitHub, we are furthering our commitment to developer freedom, openness, and innovation,” said Satya Nadella, CEO of Microsoft. “We recognize the community responsibility we are taking on with this agreement and will do our best to empower every developer to build, innovate and solve the world’s most pressing challenges.”
Developers are concerned about Microsoft’s acquisition of GitHub
While Microsoft has made great strides in developing open source software and integrating open source projects into Windows, many developers fear that this acquisition will give Microsoft access to millions of currently private projects. This has caused some developers to consider moving away from GitHub, as seen in the poll below.
To those who have @GitHub accounts:
Yes @Microsoft buy GitHub… would you still use it? Or would you move your repositories to another service?
— Bryan Lunduke (@BryanLunduke) June 2, 2018
News of the acquisition has already caused a huge increase in projects uploaded to Gitlab, which offers a similar service to GitHub. It’s too early to tell if this trend will continue now that the acquisition has been officially announced.
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