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Microsoft Has Acquired Open Source Community Site Github

According to business site Bloomberg, Microsoft has officially closed a deal with San Francisco based company GitHub.

GitHub is a hosting site for version control using git. Basically you upload a document and make changes to it and the site keeps track of the changes so that you could easily iterate or go back to previous versions. Not only does it host open source code, it has amassed a huge following establishing itself as a pillar of the open source development community.

According to Bloomberg GitHub was not looking to sell anytime soon but had a recent change of heart after several events. The first impression between the GitHub staff and Microsoft CEO Satay Nadella left a favorable outlook according to Bloomberg. Another reason for the sell came from Github’s lack of leadership. The development website had been trying to get a new CEO that would be able to turn the company to profit. Microsoft’s development philosophy had changed so much during Satay Nadella’s reign as CEO that the software giant is now the biggest contributor of open source software on GitHub. It may have been a no brainer on both parties to make closer ties to each other with both plunging forward with this open source mentality.

Last valued at 2 billion dollars in 2015, Github’s price point might be significantly higher than before and could even rival Microsoft’s last prolific acquisition with Minecraft that came in at 2.5 billion dollars. That would still be a drop in the bucket compared to Microsoft’s acquisition of LinkedIn which was 26.2 billion dollars.

Edit: It has been confirmed by Microsoft that it has indeed acquired GitHub for 7.5 billion in stock.

 

 

Chris Wanstrath, Satya Nadella and Nat Friedman

From left: Chris Wanstrath, Github CEO and co-founder; Satya Nadella, Microsoft CEO; and Nat Friedman, Microsoft corporate vice president, Developer Services

Microsoft

GitHub will retain its developer-first ethos and will operate independently to provide an open platform for all developers in all industries. Developers will continue to be able to use the programming languages, tools and operating systems of their choice for their projects — and will still be able to deploy their code to any operating system, any cloud and any device.

Microsoft Corporate Vice President Nat Friedman, founder of Xamarin and an open source veteran, will assume the role of GitHub CEO. GitHub’s current CEO, Chris Wanstrath, will become a Microsoft technical fellow, reporting to Executive Vice President Scott Guthrie, to work on strategic software initiatives.

 

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