Microsoft acquires GitHub for $7.5 billion

Much of the software created using GitHub is free, but GitHub itself is decidedly not. Microsoft today announced that it will pay $7.5 billion in stock to acquire the software development platform that bills itself as "the largest open source community in the world."

"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. "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."

The company sought to assuage concerns GitHub users may have about the deal, pledging that GitHub "will retain its developer-first ethos and will operate independently to provide an open platform for all developers in all industries." Additionally, the service will continue to support any programming language, tools, operating systems, cloud services, and device of the users' choosing.

"Microsoft is all-in on open source," Nadella said in a blog post accompanying the news. "We have been on a journey with open source, and today we are active in the open source ecosystem, we contribute to open source projects, and some of our most vibrant developer tools and frameworks are open source. When it comes to our commitment to open source, judge us by the actions we have taken in the recent past, our actions today, and in the future."

GitHub's current CEO Chris Wanstrath will transition to the role of Microsoft technical fellow "to work on strategic software initiatives" while Microsoft corporate VP Nat Friedman replaces Wanstrath in the CEO role.

GitHub was launched in April of 2008. By the time of its 10th anniversary, the platform boasted a community of 27 million developers representing 1.8 million organizations (including Microsoft, Google, Facebook, and IBM) collaborating on more than 85 million projects.