Ever since the news of Microsoft acquiring GitHub surfaced, it was much speculated that Microsoft would confirm the announcement on Monday. And finally, as Monday arrives, the confirmation from the side of Microsoft has also been made.
This tech giant finally admitted to acquiring the biggest coding platform, GitHub. This is one of the biggest acquiring of Microsoft after it acquired LinkedIn two years ago. The tech giant paid $26.2 billion to acquire LinkedIn. Back in 2015, the stock rate of GitHub was priced at $2 billion. However now, Microsoft is set to pay $7.5 billion for acquiring GitHub. It is expected that by the end of this year the deal would be finally closed.
Microsoft buys GitHub: Coding Giant
GitHub is one of the biggest centres for coding which eventually gained popularity because of the developers and companies making up projects, documents and codings. Several tech Giants such as Amazon, Apple and Google are among the big names who are prominent users of GitHub. GitHub has almost 85 million repository. GitHub will be operated or headed by the CEO Nat Friedman, founder of Xamarin. He is responsible for responding to the Chief of Microsoft’s Cloud and AI, Scott Guthrie. The CEO and the co-founder of GitHub will also be assisting as the technical fellow at Microsoft. He will also be reporting to Guthrie.
It is quite predictable as in why Microsoft aims at acquiring GitHub. Back in December, Microsoft left behind it’s competitor Codeplex in GitHub. It then became the biggest contributor to GitHub with its 1000 employees making up codes at the GitHub repository. GitHub is quite popular among the developers. Therefore, acquiring GitHub will help Microsoft to get the trust and respect from developers which is essential for their company. As Microsoft will be acquiring GitHub it will become more trusted among developers and slow businesses. The chances of it being used as a source for projects will increase. A number of companies trust over the services and softwares offered by Microsoft. Regarding the matter, the CEO of Microsoft, Satya Nadella said, “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.”
Microsoft may need to gain trust and respect of the developers
Although it sounds easy, the battle to win over the trust and respect of the developers will be hard for Microsoft. The developers have already started showing their concern over the past of Microsoft regarding the misuses, phone business of Nokia and the alleged acquiring of Skype. However, GitHub in itself isn’t perfect, over the past years it too has a number of problems which might as well require the attention of Microsoft. The prominent rival of GitHub, GitLab stated that there are 10x increase in the number of developers moving to it. This clearly indicates that the developers will be moving to the repositories which in turn will be proving to be efficient for their service.
Nevertheless, it is being suspected that Microsoft may not be putting focus on the issues such as the essential tools and internet services which are handled by some of the tech giant companies. To solve down the concern regarding the acquisition made on Microsoft, the CEO Satya Nadella came in the forefront and said, “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.”
Despite so many factors, there maybe reasons as in why the coming together of GitHub and Microsoft will prove to be helpful for the users. In the recent times, Microsoft has been advancing and promoting open source technology and it has also introduced open sourced PowerShell, Visual Studio Code and prominent Microsoft Edge JavaScript engine. Microsoft also teamed up with Canonical to introduce Ubuntu within Windows 10 and also got hold of Xamarin so as to help in the development of mobile apps. These initial undertakes have also taken aback the developers although this proved to beneficial as it earned respect among developers. Therefore it is very much essential that Microsoft caters well in the GitHub community so that it can push forward and help to gain more trust and respect of the developers. Things haven’t been same and have changed. The new Microsoft isn’t the same as that of the old Microsoft. So, now that Microsoft will be acquiring GitHub, it will help to move a lot towards the future.
Over the years, Microsoft has been in continuous struggle for the love of the developers. This is a major reason why the Microsoft phones couldn’t do well in the market and failed. Even the platform for Universal Windows Apps couldn’t fit in and failed. In the recent years, Microsoft has been spending time to improve the features of Windows 10. It has improved features such as development box, tools such as Visual Studio Code. This tool is very much beneficial for the developers as it will help them to form and debug the web as well as cloud applications. Also, not to forget this feature has gained quite a lot of popularity among the developers.
Microsoft Buys GitHub: What is the future?
Ever since the news of acquisition, several questions have been surfacing as in what will be the future of GitHub once it gets acquired by Microsoft. Microsoft acquired LinkedIn but it remained a separate platform with some changes within the software of Microsoft Office. The Minecraft was managed successfully. However, it is being expected that GitHub will be remaining separate to ensure the trust of the developers. Although there may surface a close interconnection among the developer tools and service of Microsoft. At the conference of Build the previous month, Microsoft continued to work with GitHub by bringing in some changes to the app centre of company for the developers.
Microsoft is well aware of how it will be taking care of the acquisitions that it will be making. Nadella stated, “Most importantly, we recognize the responsibility we take on with this agreement”, he further explained, “We are committed to being stewards on the GitHub community, which will retain its developer-first ethos, operate independently and remain an open platform. We will always listen to developer feedback and invest in both fundamental and new capabilities.”
However, now it will be interesting to note the pairing up of GitHub and Microsoft.