Today, Microsoft officially announced that the company will be acquiring GitHub, a popular repository and software development platform, used by both industry leaders and independent developers.
Microsoft’s acquisition will give them the opportunity to empower millions through their strong backing, infrastructure as a company, and the use of the cloud. Microsoft’s Chief Executive Officer, Satya Nadella made the announcement on the official Microsoft blog, talking about the new acquisition.
“More than 28 million developers already collaborate on GitHub, and it is home to more than 85 million code repositories used by people in nearly every country. From the largest corporations to the smallest startups, GitHub is the destination for developers to learn, share and work together to create software. It’s a destination for Microsoft too. We are the most active organization on GitHub, with more than 2 million “commits,” or updates made to projects.”
“Microsoft has been a developer-focused company from the very first product we created to the platforms and tools we offer today. Building technology so that others can build technology is core to our mission to empower every person and every organization on the planet to achieve more.”
Nadella went on to talk about some of the reasons behind Microsoft’s new venture with GitHub, “First, we will empower developers at every stage of the development lifecycle – from ideation to collaboration to deployment to the cloud. Going forward, GitHub will remain an open platform, which any developer can plug into and extend. 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 on any cloud and any device,” before adding
“Second, 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. Finally, we will bring Microsoft’s developer tools and services to new audiences.”
Microsoft will close the acquisition deal later this year, with Xamarin founder Nat Friedman taking on GitHub, while continuing to report to Microsoft and its AI Group Executive, Vice President Scott Guthrie. Additionally, Chris Wanstrath, Co-founder and CEO of GitHub will become a technical fellow at Microsoft, further bolstering the new relationship.
