14 DAY TRIAL // Microsoft is taking over GitHub for $7.5 billion as part of one of the biggest acquisitions this year, and naturally, this has also become a hot topic for regular users, developers, and tech companies worldwide.
As the largest code repository in the world, news of GitHub being purchased by Microsoft has been received with mixed reactions, with some warning that the software giant could make changes that would eventually alter the service in a substantial manner.
Diane Greene, CEO for Google's cloud businesses, says this is exactly the thing that Microsoft should avoid, admitting that she “wouldn’t have minded buying GitHub.”
“I hope they can leave them completely neutral,” she was quoted as saying. “I think that would be the thing to do after paying $7.5 billion.”
Greene says Google is the biggest contributor to GitHub, which according to statistics, has more than 57 million repositories and 28 million users.
Microsoft: GitHub will operate independently
And while everyone warns Microsoft that it shouldn’t change the current approach of GitHub, the software giant itself says it has no plan to do such a thing, though certain improvements are obviously on the table.
Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella admitted earlier this month that the company would have to earn developers’ trust given its history regarding the open-source world, but emphasized that GitHub will remain an open platform.
“We are very committed to keeping that developer-first ethos of GitHub going forward. That’s why we decided to run this company independently even post-close, operated as an open platform,” Nadella said. “Our actions from the recent past should help assure every open-source developer of what Microsoft’s intents are, and of course, they should measure us by what we do going forward and hold us accountable.”
Following Microsoft’s announcement regarding the GitHub acquisition, alternative services like GitLab and SourceForge claimed they recorded significant spikes in new users, as many developers migrated off GitHub due to concerns of changes the software giant could make to the platform.