Microsoft Completes $7.5 Billion Acquisition of GitHub

[engine]

Microsoft has announced it's completed its $7.5 billion acquisition of GitHub,

GitHub will retain its developer-first ethos, operate independently, and remain an open platform. Together, the two companies will work together to empower developers to achieve more at every stage of the development lifecycle, accelerate enterprise use of GitHub, and bring Microsoft’s developer tools and services to new audiences.

[blogs.microsoft.com...]

[blog.github.com...]



Earlier story
Microsoft to acquire GitHub [webmasterworld.com]

[keyplyr]

Why does Microsoft want GitHub? Do they want a pipeline to upcoming developers? Grab 'em first before they move on?

[tangor]

Keeping a finger on the pulse of things is a pretty savvy way to go.

[tangor]

Actually find it more interesting that GitHub had a $7.5B valuation... but as the old adage goes, things are worth whatever a party will pay.

[justpassing]

There are plenty of reasons Microsoft can be interested in GitHub.

- Like being said discover new talents, and hire them before the concurrence,
- Discover new ideas,
- May be encourage more developments for the Windows platform,
- More easily detect and reuse codes shared,
- etc

Most could have been done without acquiring GitHub, but once you own it, you have access to the whole data base, and you can more easily run tools to analysis and monitor what's going on.

[keyplyr]

MS can afford it. They just passed up Amazon as the 2nd highest valued company in the US.

[msn.com...]

[engine]

Microsoft has realised that software business is different and GitHub is how it's different.

[graeme_p]

One possible reason is that they are planning to use it internally and want to ensure it is run and developed in ways they are happy with. My former employer, a software company, was bought by one of the biggest in the industry they supplied for just that reason (after a custom system developed my MS had failed to work well!).

MS owning Github may create a problem for any companies that compete with MS (or may do so in the future - and you never know what markets MS might go into) and have private repos on Github. Even if its run separately, people might worry about trusting a competitor owned platform with trade secrets

[justpassing]

MS owning Github may create a problem for any companies that compete with MS (or may do so in the future - and you never know what markets MS might go into)

Lot of projects have been migrated to GitLab

[jamie]

considering it all seems to be about data these days, this gives ms incredible insight into where the web/mobile sphere is developing. it will now have as much data as google/apple for mobile dev, because so many projects are hosted in github.

[tangor]

Sugar Daddy will get benefits ... that's the way it works (with OPM)*.

_{*Other People's Money}

[mcneely]

Microsoft has realised that software business is different and GitHub is how it's different.

It's only different in that Microsoft got a pretty sweet deal by having to pay only pennies on the dollar or nothing at all for all of the "FREE" work being done in 26 or some odd million public repositories -- Microsoft saw the low hanging fruit and picked it for mere pennies.

[graeme_p]

It's only different in that Microsoft got a pretty sweet deal by having to pay only pennies on the dollar or nothing at all for all of the "FREE" work being done in 26 or some odd million public repositories

They only get more data about activity etc. The code in public repos is all as free (or not!) as it already was.

[engine]

@mcneely
If Microsoft hadn't done it, someone else would have.
Open source is so different from Microsoft's old way of doing things.

[mcneely]

The code in public repos is all as free (or not!) as it already was

Of course it is ... for now. It'll be interesting to see how long it is before Microsoft starts locking all of those public repositories in as proprietory -- i.e. pulling the writes/concepts and trademarking someone elses free work for their own.