Microsoft’s $7,5-billion acquisition of GitHub gives the company control of the world’s biggest open source software development platform, where 28-million developers collaborate on the development of 85-million code repositories.
“The era of the intelligent cloud and intelligent edge is upon us,” says Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella. “Computing is becoming embedded in the world, with every part of our daily life and work and every aspect of our society and economy being transformed by digital technology.
“Developers are the builders of this new era, writing the world’s code. And GitHub is their home.”
He stresses that developers add value to one another when they collaborate, share code and build on one another’s work.
“In all walks of life, we see the power of communities, and this is true for software development and developers,” Nadella says. “From the largest corporations to the smallest startups, GitHub is the destination for developers to learn, share and work together to create software.
“It’s a destination for Microsoft too. We are the most active organization on GitHub, with more than 2-million “commits”, or updates, made to projects.”
He adds that the acquisition ties in to Microsoft’s open source strategy. “We have been on a journey with open source, and today we are active in the open source ecosystem, we contribute to open source projects, and some of our most vibrant developer tools and frameworks are open source.
“When it comes to our commitment to open source, judge us by the actions we have taken in the recent past, our actions today, and in the future,” Nadella says.
In line with this, he says Microsoft has committed to allowing the GitHub community to retain its developer-first ethos, operate independently and remain an open platform.
“We will always listen to developer feedback and invest in both fundamentals and new capabilities.”
Nadella outlines three opportunities that he believes the Microsoft acquisition of GitHub will open up.
“First, we will empower developers at every stage of the development lifecycle – from ideation to collaboration to deployment to the cloud.
“Going forward, GitHub will remain an open platform, which any developer can plug into and extend. 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 on any cloud and any device.
“Second, we will accelerate enterprise developers’ use of GitHub, with our direct sales and partner channels and access to Microsoft’s global cloud infrastructure and services.
“Finally, we will bring Microsoft’s developer tools and services to new audiences.”
The acquisition is expected to close later this year. GitHub will be led by CEO Nat Friedman, while GitHub CEO and co-foundnder Chris Wanstrath will be a technical fellow at Microsoft,
Pictured: Chris Wanstrath (left), Github CEO and co-founder; Nat Friedman, Microsoft corporate vice-president: developer services; Satya Nadella, Microsoft CEO; and Amy Hood, Microsoft chief financial officer.