Microsoft invests in open source with Github purchase
The deal is not quite complete yet, but Bloomberg already thinks that there may be an announcement tomorrow of the purchase of Open Source website Github by Microsoft. They would pay 2 billion dollars for it, that’s the story. Cool. But why does Microsoft have so much money for that? Are we going to have something to do with that? I answer the first question like that, but the second one I can be short about: no, not directly. GitHub is mainly interesting for programmers.
WTF is GitHub?
If you do not program yourself, you may have heard of Github at most sideways, but it is an institute in coder circles. The whole short version? It is a website that is very useful to work with several people on a project, which is mainly used by programmers.
It is a so-called repository, which is meant for programmers to share code with each other, to respond and to work on something together. This works well because Git is working, a version control system that saves the various revisions of code so that someone can download the latest version, adjust something and upload the new version again. It is the same system that is used in Google Docs, for example. Git is actually made by Linus Trovalds – the inventor of Linux.
Because such a repository is also open to people who contribute nothing, you can also download code (if programs are ‘ready’) and use it for your own projects. In the open source world, the source code is shared, so GitHub is ideal for that. The site makes it easy to make spin-offs from someone else’s code and keep it up-to-date when the original code is changed, you can ask people to process your cool adjustments back into the original code, and there’s a very social aspect at the site where coders can talk about problems or projects.
Open Source
GitHub is extremely popular, but had a crisis in leadership and could not turn black. So something had to happen and in the context of the open source, the company did not like to go to the fair. Microsoft was interested and also because of CEO Satya Nadellaand his push towards open source for Microsoft products was the deal apparently quickly settled. Microsoft has become the biggest user of GitHub in recent years, but it is also used by Apple, Google, Amazon and hundreds of other companies.
Microsoft does not only have all programmers who have their code on GitHub a pleasure by keeping the site up and running but especially themselves. Presumably, there will be some adjustments that make it even easier to use Microsoft’s development programs in combination with the website, which will only increase the popularity of these programs. There will be a fixed currency, but for now, the main question will be what Microsoft’s plans will mean for parties that are not called Microsoft.