Microsoft announced on Monday that the company will acquire code repository GitHub for the rather large sum of $7.5bn. It’s even more impressive in rands – R94.2bn at today’s exchange rate. It’s not cash money, though – it’s Microsoft stock.
And as that stock has skyrocketed in value over the last 18 months, increasing in value by more than 66% over its 2016 price,and predicted to rise even further in the coming months/years, that’s a pretty good deal for the GitHub folks.
GitHub is the world’s “leading software development platform”, and it has a massive community of developers (28 million+) who all learn, share, and collaborate on it. This acquisition will, according to Microsoft’s official statement, “…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.”
This is just another step in Microsoft’s developer-first strategy. Under its latest CEO, Satya Nadella, Microsoft has done an about-turn on many things that were anathema under Ballmer, like anything open-source and actually listening to what customers want, and out of that has built a massively successful cloud and software business that continues to grow in leaps and bounds under Nadella’s brilliant stewardship.
Anyone worried that Microsoft’s purchase of the company will change how it works currently need not worry, if the official statement is to be believed. It says “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.”
And should Microsoft not meddle with GitHub’s current appeal and usefulness to the developer community, ZDNet says “…its standing with developers will only improve.”
What do you think of this move? Let us know in the comments below.
[Source: Microsoft, ZDNet]
