Developer.com content and product recommendations are editorially independent. We may make money when you click on links to our partners. Learn More.
Microsoft has acquired GitHub for $7.5 billion in Microsoft stock. Beloved by the open source community, GitHub is the world’s most popular code sharing service with 85 million code repositories and 28 million users. Microsoft corporate vice president Nat Friedman, the former CEO of mobile development tool vendor Xamarin, will become CEO of GitHub.
GitHub has never turned a profit, but industry observers say that Microsoft could leverage the purchase to drive more users towards its Azure cloud computing service and its development tools, including Visual Studio.
Some in the open source community are expressing distrust of Microsoft and say that they are looking for alternatives to GitHub. Although Microsoft has recently embraced open source software, its early relationship with the open source movement was hostile.
