Microsoft today announced its plans to acquire GitHub for $7.5 billion in stock. Unsurprisingly, that sent a few shock waves through the developer community, which still often eyes Microsoft with considerable unease. During a conference call this morning, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella, incoming GitHub CEO (and Xamarin founder) Nat Friedman and GitHub co-founder and outgoing CEO Chris Wanstrath laid out the plans for GitHub’s future under Microsoft. The core message everybody on today’s call stressed was that GitHub will continue to operate as an independent company. That’s very much the approach Microsoft took with its acquisition of LinkedIn, but to some degree, it’s also an admission that Microsoft is aware of its reputation among many of the developers who call GitHub their home. GitHub will remain an open platform that any developer can plug into and extend, Microsoft promises. It’ll support any cloud and any device. Unsurprisingly, while the core of GitHub won’t change, Microsoft does plan to extend GitHub’s enterprise services and integrate them with its own sales and partner channels. And Nadella noted that the company will use GitHub to bring Microsoft’s developer tools and services “to new audiences.” With Nat Friedman taking over as CEO, GitHub will have a respected technologist at the helm. Microsoft’s acquisition and integration of Xamarin has, at least from the outside, been a success (and Friedman himself always seems very happy about the outcome when I talk to him), so I think this bodes quite well for GitHub. After joining Microsoft, Friedman ran the developer services team at the company. Wanstrath, who only took over the CEO role again after its last CEO was ousted after harassment scandal at the company, had long said that he wanted to step down and take a more active product role. And that’s what’s happening now that Friedman is taking over. Wanstrath will become a technical fellow and work on “strategic software initiatives” at Microsoft. Indeed, during an interview after the acquisition was announced, Friedman repeatedly noted that he thinks GitHub is the most important developer company today — and it turns out that he started advocating for a closer relationship between the two companies right after he joined Microsoft two years ago. During today’s press call, Friedman also stressed Microsoft’s commitment to keeping GitHub as open as it is today — but he also plans to expand the service and its community. “We want to bring more developers and more capabilities to GitHub, he said. “Because as a network and as a group of people in a community, GitHub is stronger, the bigger it is.” Friedman echoed that in our interview later in the day and noted that he expected the developer community to be skeptical of the mashup of these two companies. “There is always healthy skepticism in the developer community,” he told me. “I would ask developers to look at the last few years of Microsoft history and really honestly Microsoft’s transformation into an open source company.” He asked developers to judge Microsoft by that and noted that what really matters, of course, is that the company will follow through on the promises it made today. As for the product itself, Friedman noted that everything GitHub does should be about making a developer’s life easier. And to get started, that’ll mean making developing in the cloud easier. “We think broadly about the new and compelling types of ways that we can integrate cloud services into GitHub,” he noted. “And this doesn’t just apply to our cloud. GitHub is an open platform. So we have the ability for anyone to plug their cloud services into GitHub, and make it easier for you to go from code to cloud. And it extends beyond the cloud as well. Code to cloud. code to mobile, code to edge device, code to IoT. Every workflow that a developer wants to pursue, we will support.” Another area the company will work on is the GitHub Marketplace. Microsoft says that it will offer all of its developer tools and services in the GitHub Marketplace. And unsurprisingly, VS Code, Microsoft’s free and open source code editor, will get deeply integrated GitHub support. “Our vision is really all about empowering developers and creating a home where you can use any language, any operating system, any cloud, any device for every developer, whether your student, a hobbyist, a large company, a startup or anything in between. GitHub is the home for all developers,” said Friedman. In our interview, he also stressed that his focus will be on making “GitHub better at making GitHub” and that he plans to do so by bringing Microsoft’s resources and infrastructure to the code hosting service, while at the same time leaving it to operate independently. It’s unclear whether all of these commitments today will easy developers’ fears of losing GitHub as a relatively neutral third-party in the ecosystem. Nadella, who is surely aware of this, addressed this directly today. “We recognize the responsibility we take on with this agreement,” he said. “We are committed to being stewards of the GitHub community, which will retain its developer-first ethos operate independently and remain an open platform. We will always listen to develop a feedback and invest in both fundamentals as well as new capability once the acquisition closes. In his prepared remarks, Nadella also stressed Microsoft’s heritage as a developer-centric company and that is it already the most active organization on GitHub. But more importantly, he addressed Microsoft’s role in the open source community, too. “We have always loved developers, and we love open source developers,” he said. “We’ve been on a journey ourselves with open source and the open source community. Today, we are all in with open source. We are active in the open source ecosystem. We contribute to open source project and some of our most vibrant developer tools and frameworks are open-sourced when it comes to our commitment to all source judges, by the actions we have taken in the recent past our actions today and in the future.”<doc-sep>Microsoft on Monday announced plans to acquire software developer platform GitHub in a deal valued at $7.5 billion. GitHub was valued at $2 billion in its last funding round in 2015, though it has yet to turn a profit. Microsoft has seen its once-dominant Windows unit slip in market share in recent years, spurring a cloud-first reorganization and sending Microsoft looking for alternatives to court developers. "Microsoft is a developer-first company, and by joining forces with GitHub we strengthen our commitment to developer freedom, openness and innovation," Microsoft CEO 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." Microsoft vice president Nat Friedman will assume the role of GitHub CEO, the company said. He takes over for the developer platform's founder Chris Wanstrath, who stepped down 10 months ago. "The future of software development is bright, and I'm thrilled to be joining forces with Microsoft to help make it a reality," Wanstrath said. "Their focus on developers lines up perfectly with our own, and their scale, tools and global cloud will play a huge role in making GitHub even more valuable for developers everywhere." GitHub's tools have become essential to software developers, who use it to store code, keep track of updates and discuss issues. The privately held company has more than 23 million individual users in more than 1.5 million organizations. It was on track to book more than $200 million in subscription revenue, including more than $110 million from companies using its enterprise product, GitHub told CNBC last fall. The platform has been named to CNBC's Disruptor List five times. GitHub's financials will be reported under Microsoft's Intelligent Cloud segment. The tie-up will "accelerate enterprise use of GitHub and bring Microsoft's developer tools and services to new audiences," Microsoft said. Microsoft has reportedly flirted with buying GitHub in the past, including in 2016, although GitHub denied those reports. A partnership could give Microsoft another connection point to the developers it needs to court in order to build applications on its various platforms, including the Azure cloud. Microsoft could also use data from GitHub to improve its artificial intelligence products. Microsoft doesn't expect to make money off the deal until 2020 but said it will have minimal negative impact on earnings. Talks to acquire GitHub were first reported Friday by Business Insider. The deal is expected to close by the end of 2018, Microsoft said. —CNBC's Jordan Novet contributed to this story.<doc-sep>Microsoft has reportedly acquired GitHub, and could announce the deal as early as Monday. Bloomberg reports that the software giant has agreed to acquire GitHub, and that the company chose Microsoft partly because of CEO Satya Nadella. Business Insider first reported that Microsoft had been in talks with GitHub recently. GitHub is a vast code repository that has become popular with developers and companies hosting their projects, documentation, and code. Apple, Amazon, Google, and many other big tech companies use GitHub. Microsoft is the top contributor to the site, and has more than 1,000 employees actively pushing code to repositories on GitHub. Microsoft even hosts its own original Windows File Manager source code on GitHub. The service was last valued at $2 billion back in 2015, but it’s not clear exactly how much Microsoft has paid to acquire GitHub. Microsoft loves open source now Microsoft has been rapidly investing in open source technology since Satya Nadella took over the CEO role. Microsoft has open sourced PowerShell, Visual Studio Code, and the Microsoft Edge JavaScript engine. Microsoft also partnered with Canonical to bring Ubuntu to Windows 10, and acquired Xamarin to assist with mobile app development. Microsoft is also using the open source Git version control system for Windows development, and the company even brought SQL Server to Linux. Microsoft’s Visual Studio Code, which lets developers build and debug web and cloud applications, has soared in popularity with developers. Microsoft’s GitHub acquisition will likely mean we’ll start to see even closer integration between Microsoft’s developer tools and the service. At Build last month, Microsoft continued its close work with GitHub by integrating the service into the company’s App Center for developers. There will likely be questions around Microsoft’s GitHub acquisition, especially among some open source advocates who are wary of Microsoft’s involvement. If Microsoft does indeed announce this acquisition on Monday then developers won’t have too long to wait to get a better idea of Microsoft’s GitHub plans.<doc-sep>
What to expect from the Microsoft-GitHub deal Watch Now Microsoft's biggest hurdle with its just-announced $7.5 billion GitHub acquisition isn't figuring out how to integrate its services with GitHub. It's not how/when/whether to try to host parts of GitHub on Azure. Nor is it about how much or little management control to exert over the well-known and much-used developer platform. Credit: Microsoft Microsoft's biggest challenge is to try to get developers to forget about the company's not-so-distant past marked by aggressively attacking open source. And I don't mean former CEO Steve Ballmer's infamous remarks about Linux being "a cancer." I mean things like Microsoft's attempts to threaten open source vendors and their customers with patent lawsuits and more. Also: Why Microsoft is buying GitHub: It's all about developer relationships Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella knows this well. "Judge us by the actions we've taken in the recent past, our actions today and our actions in the future," he said during an analyst and press call about today's acqusition. Nadella told call participants that Microsoft loves open source developers and is all-in on open source. He pledged to keep GitHub open, so that developers can use any language, any cloud and target any device from the platform. So what's in this for Microsoft? The slides embedded in my post here, which are from the analyst/press call, tell part of the story. Credit: Microsoft Microsoft already is the largest contributor to GitHub. By buying the company -- and keeping it out of competitors' hands -- Microsoft is looking to participate in "every stage of development," officials said today. GitHub serves as a code repository and also offers developers a place to learn, develop, collaborate on and document their code. GitHub isn't just for open source code; it also is for private code repositories that aren't necessarily covered by open-source licenses. Microsoft didn't mention plans to integrate GitHub with LinkedIn, but the "learning" angle here makes me think that could figure in longer term plans. GitHub has an on-premises "GitHub Enterprise" offering, which is an on-premises code-development/repository platform that companies can use inside their firewalls. Microsoft plans to have its channel and sales force help sell that to enterprise customers. Credit: Microsoft Microsoft also is looking at the GitHub Markeplace as a way to get its own tools and services in front of developers. On today's call, officials said they expect bringing VS Code, Microsoft's lightweight code editor, to GitHub will make development even more seamless. Nat Friedman, the new GitHub CEO, said Microsoft plans to put all of its development tools and services in the GitHub Marketplace. I asked Microsoft officials if and when they plan to move GitHub onto Azure. A spokesperson said the company had nothing to share on that front, especially since the deal has yet to receive regulatory approval. Read also: GitHub makes open-source project licensing easier with an open-source program | GitHub aims to make coding more automated The company's GitHub Business offering integrates with AWS, Google Cloud and Azure. GitHub seemingly runs at least some of the cloud pieces of the GitHub services in its own datacenters. (Thanks to Gardner von Holt for the link on that.) As reactions on Twitter and Reddit this morning made abundantly clear, there are some who believe Microsoft's actions over the past few years around open source show the company has changed and will be a good steward for GitHub. There are also many who think the Microsoft leopard will never change its spots and that Microsoft has some kind of new plan to embrace, extend and extinguish open source that revolves around the GitHub acquisition. We'll see if the "new" Microsoft can win over the critics, the way it's largely done with its Mojang acquisition....