Microsoft is going to acquire GitHub, the biggest community of developers to share, discover and build better software. The deal could likely be shout out as early as Monday. The deal is going to be worth billions of dollars and Microsoft would be rolling up a crucial part of the ecosystem.
Talking about the GitHub, it is one of the most popular code repositories among developers and companies hosting their code, projects, and documentation. Giant tech companies like Google, Apple, and Amazon are also benefiting from GitHub to work on code collaboratively.
According to Bloomberg, “GitHub has more than 27 million software developers working on 80 million repositories of code.”
Microsoft is the biggest contributor on GitHub with more than 1000 employees working actively pushing codes to repositories on GitHub.
To your surprise, Microsoft even hosts its own Window File Manager source Code on GitHub. In 2015, the service was valued at $2 billion, but it is still not clear that how much Microsoft has paid to acquire GitHub.
After the Satya Nadella took over Microsoft as a CEO, the company is seen rapidly investing in open source technology. It has open sourced Microsoft Edge, PowerShell, JavaScript engine and Visual Studio Code. Moreover, Microsoft also collaborated with Canonical to bring Ubuntu to Windows 10 and attained Xamarin to assist mobile app development.
Microsoft is also incorporating open source Git Version control system for Windows development. Moreover, the company also bought SQL Server to Linux. Microsoft Visual Studio Code has gained the popularity that allows developers to debug and built cloud and web applications.
What does the acquisition of GitHub mean for the biggest crowd-sourced code repository bought by the biggest software company? It will potentially give Microsoft access to over 26 million software developers and their code.
It will likely bring some innovative and exciting software developed by Microsoft. However, the details of the degree of ownership and control over the code stored on GitHub is yet to be confirmed, while users are cautious.
