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- It's official. Microsoft said in a blog post, "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. [...] 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."
GitHub is one of the most popular sites for hosting repositories of code. Google moved most of its projects to GitHub after Google Code shut down, and countless open-source Android applications and libraries live on the site as well. GitHub has been an independent company for its entire 10-year history, but that might not be the case for much longer.
Rumors have been circulating for a few days that Microsoft has been in discussions to acquire GitHub. The purchase makes sense - not only is the majority of Microsoft's developer documentation now hosted on GitHub, but so are many of the company's recent open-source projects like Visual Studio Code and PowerShell.
Bloomberg is reporting that Microsoft has already reached an agreement to purchase the company. GitHub apparently preferred selling the company to going public, and Microsoft's newest CEO Satya Nadella impressed GitHub executives.
In response to the news, many developers have started looking for alternative options for hosting their projects. GitLab, an open-source alternative to GitHub, is reporting 10x the normal daily amount of created repositories.
The deal will reportedly be announced tomorrow (Monday, June 4). You can find Bloomberg's coverage at the source link below.
UPDATE: 2018/06/04 7:52am PDT BY
It's official. Microsoft said in a blog post, "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. [...] 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."
A press release from Microsoft said GitHub will be acquired for $7.5 billion in Microsoft stock, and the purchase is expected to close by the end of 2018.
Source: Bloomberg