{"id":23361,"date":"2018-06-04T22:54:30","date_gmt":"2018-06-04T22:54:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/news.microsoft.com\/?p=407202"},"modified":"2018-06-04T22:54:30","modified_gmt":"2018-06-04T22:54:30","slug":"bloomberg-microsoft-buys-github-for-7-5-billion-going-back-to-its-roots","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sickgaming.net\/blog\/2018\/06\/04\/bloomberg-microsoft-buys-github-for-7-5-billion-going-back-to-its-roots\/","title":{"rendered":"Bloomberg: \u2018Microsoft buys GitHub for $7.5 billion, going back to its roots\u2019"},"content":{"rendered":"

Microsoft Corp.<\/a> is buying GitHub Inc. for $7.5 billion in stock, bringing in house a community of 28 million programmers who publish code openly and extending a shift away from a strategy of shrouding its software in secrecy.<\/p>\n

The move is both a return to Microsoft\u2019s earliest software-development roots and a sharp turnaround from its stance on open-source software a decade ago. Chief Executive Officer Satya Nadella said the deal, expected to close by the end of this year, will speed moves into the cloud and artificial intelligence.<\/p>\n

\u201cComputing is becoming embedded in the world, with every part of our daily life and work and every aspect of our society and economy being transformed by digital technology,\u201d Nadella wrote in a blog post<\/a> Monday. \u201cDevelopers are the builders of this new era, writing the world\u2019s code. And GitHub is their home.\u201d<\/p>\n

GitHub, a 10-year old San Francisco-based startup, was founded as a way for software developers to share and collaborate on coding tools and is an essential platform for many open-source programmers.<\/p>\n

Microsoft wasn\u2019t always so welcoming to such coders, who were seen as a threat to the company\u2019s business as a commercial software company. Co-founder Bill Gates and former Chief Executive Officer Steve Ballmer championed developers building proprietary software for Microsoft, not the kind of open-source projects found on GitHub.<\/p>\n

In fact, in the early 2000s, Ballmer and his team were highly critical of that kind of a project, calling it a “cancer” and saying that it went against “the American Way.”<\/a><\/p>\n

A lot has changed since then. Under Nadella, who took over four years ago, Microsoft has been increasingly relying on open-source software to add programming tools, and the purchase of GitHub lets it tie up with a company that has become a key part of the way Microsoft writes its own software. Microsoft is now supporting many flavors of Linux, an open-source operating system, and has used open models on some significant cloud and developer products itself. This deal will mark another dramatic step in that direction.<\/p>\n

The acquisition reflects Microsoft\u2019s \u201congoing pivot to open-source software, seeking to further broaden its large and growing development community,\u201d said Richard Lane, an analyst at Moody\u2019s Investors Service.<\/p>\n

Redmond, Washington-based Microsoft is now one of the biggest contributors to GitHub, and as Nadella moves the company away from complete dependence on the Windows operating system to more in-house development on Linux, the company needs new ways to connect with the broader developer community.<\/p>\n

\n
<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

Not all the developers are happy about being controlled by the world\u2019s biggest software company. \u201cAnybody active in the open source community should be upset that Microsoft is going to be the steward of this large body of code,\u201d said coder Jacques Mattheij<\/a>. He said he deleted his GitHub account.<\/p>\n

Nadella acknowledged that he\u2019ll have to earn the trust of GitHub\u2019s users, but also said that Microsoft is \u201call in on open source.\u201d<\/p>\n

\n
<\/div>\n<\/div>\n
\n

Satya Nadella<\/p>\n<\/div>\n

Photographer: David Ryder\/Bloomberg<\/p>\n

\u201cMicrosoft is a developer-first company, and by joining forces with GitHub we strengthen our commitment to developer freedom, openness and innovation,\u201d Nadella said in the statement.<\/p>\n

The deal will add to Microsoft\u2019s operating income in its fiscal year 2020, the company said in a statement<\/a> Monday. The shares were up 0.6 percent to $101.38 at 9:55 a.m. in New York.<\/p>\n

For GitHub, which has been trying for nine months to find a new chief executive officer and has yet to make a profit, the acquisition provides a new way forward.<\/p>\n

GitHub, which will operate independently, will be led by Nat Friedman, the former CEO of Xamarin and a current Microsoft developer-tools executive. It will continue to support the programming languages, tools and operating systems of the user\u2019s choice.<\/p>\n

GitHub preferred selling the company to going public and chose Microsoft partially because it was impressed by Nadella, a person familiar with the deal said on Sunday.<\/p>\n

While GitHub is used by Alphabet Inc.\u2019s Google and Microsoft to store corporate code and collaborate, the company\u2019s losses have been significant — it lost $66 million<\/a> over three quarters in 2016. It had revenue of $98 million in nine months of 2016.<\/p>\n

Microsoft has talked to GitHub on and off for a few years. Recently they began talks about a partnership but progressed to discussing an acquisition, according to a person familiar with the situation.<\/p>\n

The deal is the third of Nadella\u2019s four-year tenure that\u2019s valued at above $2 billion, following LinkedIn<\/a> in 2016 for $26.2 billion and the maker of the Minecraft video game, Mojang AB<\/a>, in 2014 for $2.5 billion.<\/p>\n