Microsoft has pulled the trigger to purchase Github, a community for developers to discover, share, and build better software through open source. Costing them $7.5 billion, Microsoft will be bringing the community of over 28 million programmers underneath their umbrella.
The move should be final by the end of this year, and Microsoft plans to use this to speed moves into cloud and artificial intelligence.
“Developers are the builders of this new era, writing the world’s code. And GitHub is their home.” — Chief Executive Officer Satya Nadella
Github started out 10 years ago, giving developers the ability to share their work openly so that other users can help contribute to the projects as they progress. Users can download code to execute on their end, or adjust it as they see fit, making it a great way to fill the gaps when developers hit a wall or want to provide the current work in progress before the next version of their project releases to the general public. From snippets to full scale applications, you can find it all on Github.
This is a fresh move for Microsoft since they have been heavily relying on proprietary software all this time. This brings the open-source community under their wing, opening many potential doors of opportunity for bringing new ideas into their own software (such as supporting external platforms and API, deeper support for Linux, the cloud, AI and so forth).
This move could also mean big business for them if they plan to use this to their advantage when it comes to rolling out any future mobile versions of their operating system. Maybe by interacting much closer with the dev community, they won’t have so much of an issue in future app wars.
Github has also given Nat Friedman the position of CEO. Nat is a co-founder of Ximian (a company that developed, sold and supported application software for Linux and Unix), as well as Xamarin later on (which developed tools to write native Android, iOS, and Windows apps with). Microsoft purchased Xamarin in 2016, and Nat became corporate vice president of Developer Services with Microsoft. Now he moves on with his new position at Github to help pave the way ahead.
