It was reported over the weekend that Microsoft was acquiring GitHub for around $7.5 billion, and this morning, the tech giant made it official. Microsoft is acquiring GitHub in an all-stock offer, which means that GitHub’s employees will be getting a ton of Microsoft stock, which is currently at all-time highs, making it a pretty good deal for GitHub. This deal is going to bring Microsoft back to its roots, of development. GitHub is a place where developers are able to host open source code and collaborate with others. There are 28 million developers on GitHub’s network, and not all of them are seasoned developers, a good number of them are there learning.
Microsoft’s CEO, Satya Nadella put together a blog post today about why the company was acquiring GitHub, and basically said that developers are going to be “at the center of solving the world’s most pressing challenges.” And There are over 85 million code repositories on GitHub right now, from small startup companies to large corporations, everyone is using GitHub. Nadella said that Microsoft is a developer-focused company, and has bene since its inception. So with the purchase of GitHub, Microsoft will be able to offer more tools for developers and plenty of reference materials.
This deal is set to close by the end of the calendar year, giving Microsoft just under six months to get it finished. Microsoft will be holding a conference call today at 10AM EST to help answer any questions that arise from this purchase. Many developers that are big on open source development, are not too happy with Microsoft purchasing GitHub, given Microsoft’s recent history of closing down code so that it is no longer open source. Though Nadella and the team at Microsoft is keen to make sure it all stays open source, so hopefully Microsoft stays true to its word. Microsoft has said that GitHub will remain as a separate entity, and running under the umbrella of Microsoft.