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Mergers: GitHub acquired by Microsoft
  • Vitaliy_KiselevVitaliy_Kiselev

    Microsoft Corp. has agreed to acquire GitHub Inc., the code repository company popular with many software developers, and could announce the deal as soon as Monday, according to people familiar with the matter.

    GitHub preferred selling the company to going public and chose Microsoft partially because it was impressed by Chief Executive Officer Satya Nadella, said one of the people, who asked not to be identified discussing private information. Terms of the agreement weren’t known on Sunday. GitHub was last valued at $2 billion in 2015.

    The acquisition provides a way forward for San Francisco-based GitHub, which has been trying for nine months to find a new CEO and has yet to make a profit from its popular service that allows coders to share and collaborate on their work. It also helps Microsoft, which is increasingly relying on open-source software, to add programming tools and tie up with a company that has become a key part of the way Microsoft writes its own software.

    https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2018-06-03/microsoft-is-said-to-have-agreed-to-acquire-coding-site-github

  • 12 Replies sorted by
  • CFreakCFreak

    Oh F*ck! There goes all that innovation and hard work done towards more open and flexible software!

  • Vitaliy_KiselevVitaliy_Kiselev

    @CFreak

    Well, I am sure lot of github users are among crowd of "no economics and political posts". So comes as surprise for them. And it should not be such.

  • Vitaliy_KiselevVitaliy_Kiselev

    REDMOND, Wash. — June 4, 2018 — Microsoft Corp. on Monday announced it has reached an agreement to acquire GitHub, the world’s leading software development platform where more than 28 million developers learn, share and collaborate to create the future. Together, the two companies will empower developers to achieve more at every stage of the development lifecycle, accelerate enterprise use of GitHub, and bring Microsoft’s developer tools and services to new audiences.

    “Microsoft is a developer-first company, and by joining forces with GitHub we strengthen our commitment to developer freedom, openness and innovation,” said Satya Nadella, CEO, Microsoft. “We recognize the community responsibility we take on with this agreement and will do our best work to empower every developer to build, innovate and solve the world’s most pressing challenges.”

    Under the terms of the agreement, Microsoft will acquire GitHub for $7.5 billion in Microsoft stock. Subject to customary closing conditions and completion of regulatory review, the acquisition is expected to close by the end of the calendar year.

    GitHub will retain its developer-first ethos and will operate independently to provide an open platform for all developers in all industries. 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 to any operating system, any cloud and any device.

    Microsoft Corporate Vice President Nat Friedman, founder of Xamarin and an open source veteran, will assume the role of GitHub CEO. GitHub’s current CEO, Chris Wanstrath, will become a Microsoft technical fellow, reporting to Executive Vice President Scott Guthrie, to work on strategic software initiatives.

  • IronFilmIronFilm

    Crazy that it was worth billions yet still hasn't made a profit!

  • tonalttonalt

    This is fantastic news. Microsoft has shown great progress towards more open mindset for example with multi-platform .NET Core -framework. This is natural continuum to that.

  • Vitaliy_KiselevVitaliy_Kiselev

    @tonalt

    I am glad you like it.

    Just at the time of Google-Microsoft merger be sure to choose side wisely. :-)

  • robertGLrobertGL

    I don't understand. Free is the new insanely valuable? Couldn't have Microsoft made its own code repository?

  • Vitaliy_KiselevVitaliy_Kiselev

    @robertGL

    No, they could not make it such big.

    As far as I understand it is main value here - small and medium developers. While large ones will pull out fast or will leave some of unimportant projects, most small ones will be left.

    And it is not the income, but access to code itself that is valuable here. Microsoft will tell you that they'll never use this code, but they lie. They will attach extremely advanced system to it so proper people from inside will have peek at any code to use ideas and fragments. Saves billions.

  • eatstoomuchjameatstoomuchjam

    Microsoft had their own code repository a few years ago (codeplex? something like that). Nobody used it. It's better to buy an already-active community.

  • tonalttonalt

    Microsoft is one of the biggest Github users.

  • Vitaliy_KiselevVitaliy_Kiselev

    @tonalt

    As well as other big corporations. As they are biggest gainers of github like approches.

  • eatstoomuchjameatstoomuchjam

    I was right - it was Codeplex.

    And when they shut it down, there were even articles saying "github wins." Microsoft helped people migrate their codeplex projects to github and shut down codeplex just a hair over 6 months ago. It seems likely that their github acquisition process started sometime around March of last year.

    https://venturebeat.com/2017/03/31/github-wins-microsoft-is-shutting-down-codeplex-on-december-15/

    While people will be able to download an archive of their data, Microsoft is teaming up with GitHub, which provides similar functionality for hosting code that people can collaborate on, to give users “a streamlined import experience” to migrate code and related content there, Microsoft corporate vice president Brian Harry wrote in a blog post.

    Simply put, GitHub won.

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