14 DAY TRIAL // Microsoft’s takeover of GitHub is projected to receive regulatory approval in Europe as soon as this week, according to a Reuters report.
The software giant announced the agreement back in June, revealed that GitHub would be purchased for $7.5 billion. This makes GitHub the second major Microsoft takeover in the last decade, after the world’s number one software company paid $26 billion on business social network LinkedIn.
The deal has led to concerns that Microsoft could impact GitHub’s operations and make changes to its services, with a large number of developers moving to alternative services after the agreement was announced.
GitHub is the world’s number one open-source repository, and Microsoft is the top contributor to the service, with Google and Apple also hosting their projects on GitHub.
GitHub to operate independently
However, the Redmond-based software giant promised that GitHub would run independently without any major change on its culture. CEO Satya Nadella said both Microsoft and GitHub would evolve together with further improvements, emphasizing that the core of the service would stay untouched.
“GitHub will retain its developer-first ethos and will operate independently to provide an open platform for all developers in all industries. 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 to any operating system, any cloud and any device,” Microsoft said at that time.
An announcement over the EU clearance of the deal is expected to be made sometime this week, according to the cited source, and Microsoft will probably release a press statement of its own.
Microsoft Corporate Vice President Nat Friedman, founder of Xamarin, will be appointed CEO of GitHub once the deal goes through, while GitHub’s current CEO, Chris Wanstrath, will become a Microsoft technical fellow, reporting to Executive Vice President Scott Guthrie.