A huge news coming from Bloomberg is that Microsoft is set to acquire GitHub. The deal will possibly be announced by Monday to the world, but it seems like both the companies have agreed to it. GitHub chose to acquired by Microsoft due to Satya Nadella, CEO of Microsoft. It was reported by Business Insider earlier that Microsoft is in talks with GitHub. While this will be a good news for Microsoft, most of the developers aren’t happy with it.
What Is GitHub?
GitHub is a code repository which has become popular over its course. It was started in 2008 and is preferred by many developers and companies to push their codes to the internet. Many of the top companies like Apple, Microsoft, Google use GitHub. Microsoft is one of the top users of GitHub with 1,000 active employees pushing codes every day. Microsoft has even pushed its Window File Manager code to the repository and made it open source. GitHub was evaluated as a $2 billion company in 2015.
Microsoft’s Interest In GitHub
Since the time Satya Nadella took charge of Microsoft as their CEO, the company is investing heavily in open source technologies. They made Visual Studio Code and PowerShell open source. It acquired Xamarin which features Mobile App Development and it made open source too. If Microsoft acquires GitHub we might see integration between the Microsoft’s developer tools and the services. Last month, Microsoft integrated the service into the company’s App Center.
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Why Are The Developers Not Happy With This Deal?
With the hype of this deal spreading across the Social Networks, you can easily see that the developers are unhappy. Numerous tweets have been made by people using the service and it is quite evident that people are unhappy with it. Some of the users have tweeted, “R.I.P. GitHub 2008-2018” too. One of the main reason for such reaction is due to the history of Microsoft which doesn’t operate much on openness. Nearly 80 million repositories are hosted on the site and people think that they might have to start paying for the services now. But this might not be totally true.
I don't think people understand how many of us at Microsoft love GitHub to the bottom of our hearts.
If anybody decided to mess with that community, there would be a riot to say the least
— Mat Velloso (@matvelloso) June 4, 2018
But after Satya Nadella assumed office in 2014, Microsoft has been a little different. They have started to work on a larger platform by pushing some of their important codes on GitHub and giving open source license. People can view the internal of .NET framework and how the Visual Studio Code is built. This might have been impossible 10 years ago, but they are changing. As said Microsoft is the highest active contributor to GitHub, they are also opening to other ideas. Microsoft has brought Linux to Windows 10. It has made its Visual Studio Code run on both Linux and Mac OS X.
Another danger people feel is that GitHub might lose his brand recognition. History shows that Microsoft has acquired companies and have made it their one of the businesses unit. They acquired Forethought in 1987 and Navision in 2002 which were made as a business unit inside Microsoft. But, over the time it has changed. Microsoft acquired LinkedIn in 2016, but the user does not feel any major changes in the platform. It is still the same and with the same CEO just that working under Microsoft’s leadership.
Verdict
With GitHub being a brand of its own, it seems like Microsoft will treat it the same way as LinkedIn. But, after acquiring GitHub, Microsoft can control tech requirement of various industries as many depends on LinkedIn and GitHub. We have to wait till Monday when the companies officially declares the deal.
