In the blog in which Friedman announces the news, the CEO writes that GitHub will continue to be “independent as a community, platform and company”. “This means that GitHub keeps the developer at the forefront, continues to stand out and remains openly accessible.” Friedman also states that GitHub “will always support developers in their choice of language, license, tool, platform or cloud.”
When the 7.5 billion dollar acquisition was announced, some users worried that Microsoft would change the policy and functionality of GitHub. Although, the number of GitHub users has increased since the acquisition of 28 million to 31 million.
“We’ve always been focused on developers, from the first product we created to the platforms and tools we offer today,” Nadella wrote last June. “In addition, Microsoft is committed to empowering communities. We believe in their power to reach further than their members could do for themselves. ” The company is very focused on open source work. In this way, explains Nadella, three opportunities open up for the company: empowering communities at each stage of the development cycle (from ideation to collaboration and even implementation in the cloud), accelerate the use of GitHub by corporate developers with access to Microsoft’s global cloud infrastructure and services and offer the firm’s development tools and services to new audiences.
Also published on Medium.