Microsoft's $7.5bn acquisition of the developer platform GitHub has received the necessary regulatory approval and is now official.
European Union regulators recently approved the acquisition which was first announced in June. At that time, Microsoft said that Xamarin's CEO Nat Friedman would become GitHub's new CEO while its current CEO Chris Wanstrath would become a Microsoft Technical Fellow.
When the acquisition was first announced back in June, it came with mixed reactions from developers. Some praised the changes Microsoft had made since Satya Nadella became CEO in 2014 and suggested that the company would provide a good home for GitHub. Others however, are still wary of the tech giant and have considered moving away from GitHub once the acquisition is complete.
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Microsoft officials have stressed their intent to keep GitHub's platform and language independent from the company. This would be quite similar to how the company handled its acquisition of the job network site LinkedIn which runs mostly independently despite being owned by Microsoft.
Reasons behind the acquisition
Once Microsoft announced its plans to acquire GitHub, Nat Friedman took to Reddit where he did an Ask Me Anything (AMA) explaining the company's reasoning behind its decision to acquire GitHub, saying:
"We are not buying GitHub to turn it into Microsoft; we are buying GitHub because we believe in the importance of developers, and in GitHub's unique role in the developer community. Our goal is to help GitHub be better at being GitHub, and if anything, to help Microsoft be a little more like GitHub."
We will start by focusing on the daily experience of using GitHub and will double down on our paper cuts project," said Friedman in a blog post announcing the acquisition's completion. "We will improve core scenarios like search, notifications, issues/projects, and our mobile experience. And of course we are excited to make GitHub Actions broadly available."
