What would Microsoft gain from buying the open source community GitHub? For almost a week now, this news has been doing the rounds. Now, GitHub CEO and co-founder Chris Wanstrath has confirmed the acquisition in a blog post. Wanstrath said that the acquisition took place because Microsoft and GitHub saw eye-to-eye on core subjects like the growing need for developers and the growing importance of software in all facets of modern lives. He said in a statement, “We 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.”
Now, this big news in the machine learning and data science world has generated interest on many levels such as:
Why would Microsoft, a tech behemoth, be interested in buying a code repository which is popular with web developers
Does GitHub need corporate backing for open source products to take offWill developers take their code offsiteAccording to a GitHub note, they have earned mindshare within the developer community, and Microsoft’s acquisition is certainly an attempt to garner and cultivate that mindshare.
However, the long-term strategic implication seems to be that Microsoft wants to use GitHub as a means to drive Azure adoption.GitLab CEO Sid Sijbrandij said, “The way developers produce, deliver and maintain code has changed significantly in the last ten years and we applaud GitHub for being a driving force supporting the vast independent developer community through this evolution. This acquisition affirms the global importance of software developers and their influence in the enterprise. Microsoft likely acquired GitHub so it could more closely integrate it with Microsoft Visual Studio Team Services (VSTS) and ultimately help drive compute usage for Azure.”