Microsoft on Monday said it will buy software development platform GitHub, in a
deal worth 7.5 billion US dollars which will blend two opposite corporate cultures.
The
tech giant is a heavyweight in terms of software
whose source codes are not openly available or modifiable, exactly the counter
of GitHub's philosophy.
Created in 2008, GitHub allows developers to
cooperatively manage software and has more than 28 million users around the
world.
"Microsoft is a developer-first company, and by joining forces with
GitHub we strengthen our commitment to developer freedom, openness and
innovation," Microsoft chief executive Satya Nadella said in a statement.
"We
recognize the community responsibility we take on with this agreement and will
do our best work to empower every developer to build, innovate and solve the
world's most pressing challenges."
The veteran tech firm said it "will acquire
GitHub for 7.5 billion US dollars in Microsoft stock."
Subject to customary closing
conditions and regulatory review, the deal is expected to be finalized by the
end of the year, Microsoft said in a statement on its website.
"GitHub will
retain its developer-first ethos and will operate independently to provide an
open platform for all developers in all industries," Microsoft said. "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 has
begun moving towards an open source software culture, proposing for example
Linux on its Windows Azure cloud service. It also started a training program
with Linux and others.
Microsoft Corporate Vice President Nat Friedman, founder
of Xamarin and an open source veteran, will become GitHub CEO. GitHub's current
chief executive, Chris Wanstrath, will move to Microsoft as a technical fellow
to work on strategic software initiatives.
Writing on The GitHub Blog, Wanstrath
said that he "could have never imagined" news of such a merger, when open source
and business were considered as different "as oil and water" a decade ago.
But
he said Microsoft and GitHub have already collaborated on projects, and "their
vision for the future closely matches our own."
He said "both believe that
software development needs to become easier, more accessible, more intelligent,
and more open, so more people can become developers and existing developers can
spend more time focusing on the unique problems they're trying to solve."
In
April, Microsoft reported that its earnings rose 35 percent to 7.4 billion US dollars in
the fiscal third quarter, with revenue up 16 percent to 26.8 billion US dollars.
Earnings
were lifted by gains in its core cloud computing operations for business.
Microsoft said the GitHub acquisition is expected to have a negative impact on
2019 earnings but positive beginning in 2020.
Source(s): AFP