Microsoft Closes Its $7.5 Billion Purchase of GitHub (techcrunch.com)

Microsoft has official closed its acquisition of GitHub, the Git-based code sharing and collaboration service with 31 million developers. "The Redmond, WA-based software behemoth first said it would acquire GitHub for $7.5 billion in stock in June of this year, and after the acquisition closed it would continue to run it as an independent platform and business," reports TechCrunch. From the report: The acquisition is yet another sign of how Microsoft has been doubling down on courting developers and presenting itself as a neutral partner to help them with their projects. That is because, despite its own very profitable proprietary software business, Microsoft also has a number of other businesses -- for example, Azure, which competes with AWS and Google Cloud -- that rely heavily on it being unbiased towards one platform or another. And GitHub, Microsoft hopes, will be another signal to the community of that position. In that regard, it will be an interesting credibility test for the companies. Nat Friedman, previously the CEO of Xamarin, will be the CEO of GitHub on Monday. He says the site will be run as an independent platform and business.

"We will always support developers in their choice of any language, license, tool, platform, or cloud," he writes, noting that there will be more tools to come. "We will continue to build tasteful, snappy, polished tools that developers love," he added.

Comments

Time will tell.

[nimbius]

The fact that Nat Friedman is heading this up is cause for me to lower my machete and molotov. Nat is a smart guy, and if given the opportunity hes shown he knows how to deliver what the community wants.

the canary for Microsofts acquisition however is, also, Nat. Once he resigns its an impossible act to follow for Microsofts dyed-in-the-wool chain of command. Theyll need to continue the momentum, redouble their commitment to the community and maintain good communication. Gitlab and Sourceforge are too readily available, too easy to use, and have all the same features as github. Microsoft is literally banking on their ability to curate a very perceptive userbase...something they have failed to do time and time again

Embrace, check

[Anonymous Coward]

Extend, check ...

So, gitlab then?

[Trogre]

Let's just assume that Microsoft will follow their overwhelming modus operandi and screw this up.

See you all over at gitlab?