It was only yesterday that we reported on a rumoured purchase of GitHub by Microsoft. As it turns out, the rumour is true; Microsoft is acquiring the coding site for USD7.5 billion in Microsoft stock.
“I am very excited to announce that Microsoft is acquiring GitHub and expect the agreement to close by the end of the year. While it will still take a few months to finalize, we wanted to share the news as soon as we were able,” says GitHub founder and former CEO Chris Wanstrath in a statement on GitHub’s blog.
“Microsoft is a developer-first company, and by joining forces with GitHub we strengthen our commitment to developer freedom, openness and innovation,” says Satya Nadella, Microsoft CEO. “We recognize the community responsibility we take on with this agreement and will do our best work to empower every developer to build, innovate and solve the world’s most pressing challenges.”
Nat Friedman, Microsoft corporate vice president, will become GitHub’s CEO. Chris Wanstrath meanwhile will become a Microsoft technical fellow and work on strategic software initiatives. It is interesting how Microsoft came up with the value of USD 7.5 billion to acquire GitHub; they were only worth an estimated USD2 billion back in 2015. Another thing to note is that the coding site has never actually been profitable. They rely heavily on users who subscribe with paid accounts without much else in terms of income.
Furthermore, GitHub boasts 28 million developers and 85 million code repositories, positioning it as a bastion for coders and developers. Not all of them are excited about the deal though. Microsoft doesn’t have a good history in terms of how it approaches open-source products. Indeed, many will remember how aggressive they were in trying to take down Linux years ago.
We still aren’t sure how Microsoft will be using GitHub in its ecosystem but this is an exciting development nonetheless. Only time will tell if GitHub users’ worries about Microsoft becomes true or not.
You can read GitHub’s full statement on the deal by clicking here.
