As of June 4, 2018 Microsoft has officially announced it’s aqcuisition of GitHub for the sum of $7.5 billion. Yes, you read that right, Microsoft paid out Billions for the massive source code repository GitHub.
Although this is a very smart business move many saw it coming, with GitHub on stage at Microsoft’s developer conference and the Git 2.0 inclusion in the new visual studio update. While this doesn’t seem to phase some, many are not happy about it. GitLab has been devoting a lot of time marketing to GitHub users with some 13,000 projects already abandoning GitHub as of Monday for it’s competitor.
But why are so many developers fleeing from their long time repository provider? Shouldn’t everyone be excited about such a large leader in the tech industry, with it’s vast resources, acquiring GitHub? Well this stems primarly from distrust of Microsoft. Microsoft has long a long history of being against open source works. Even Steve Ballmer (yes, developers developers developers developers) went as far as to say that open source was a “cancer”.
While I fully understand the general populace’s level of agnst, one thing that should ease these feelings is that Microsoft purchased not with cash but with stock. The stock purchase will ensure that Microsoft still has to answer to the owners of Github (being that they are now a major shareholder).
What are my personal opinions? Well, I would be lying if I didn’t say that I wasn’t nervous about this, however I am not rushing to remove all of my repositories. I am however, making backups.