14 DAY TRIAL // Microsoft’s $7.5 billion takeover of GitHub is now complete, as the acquisition has received all the go-ahead from competition watchdogs across the world.
In an announcement today, the software giant reiterates that GitHub will operate independently “as a community, platform, and business.”
Earlier this year after confirming the deal, developers across the world expressed their concerns that GitHub’s culture may be altered by Microsoft. As a result, developers migrated en-masse to alternative services, with the software giant promising to keep GitHub untouched.
“This means that GitHub will retain its developer-first values, distinctive spirit, and open extensibility. We will always support developers in their choice of any language, license, tool, platform, or cloud,” Nat Friedman, the new CEO of GitHub, said today.
Three major objectives
At the same time, GitHub’s product philosophy will also be unchanged, Microsoft promises.
“We love GitHub because of the deep care and thoughtfulness that goes into every facet of the developer’s experience. I understand and respect this, and know that we will continue to build tasteful, snappy, polished tools that developers love,” Friedman continued.
Microsoft says there are three priorities for GitHub in the long term, one of which is ensuring GitHub is the best place for productive communities and teams. Furthermore, Microsoft plans to make GitHub accessible to more developers around the world, and eventually focus on reliability, security, and performance.
“We will start by focusing on the daily experience of using GitHub and will double down on our paper cuts project. We will improve core scenarios like search, notifications, issues/projects, and our mobile experience. And of course we are excited to make GitHub Actions broadly available,” the CEO said.
There are more than 31 million developers on GitHub at the moment, and Microsoft is the largest contributor. Companies like Google and Apple also host their projects on GitHub.