Microsoft is buying GitHub in a $7.5 billion deal

Microsoft has reached an agreement to buy GitHub, the source repository and collaboration platform, in a deal worth $7.5 billion. The all-stock deal is expected to close by the end of the year, subject to regulatory approval in the US and EU.

"Microsoft is a developer-first company, and by joining forces with GitHub we strengthen our commitment to developer freedom, openness and innovation," CEO Satya Nadella said in a post on the Microsoft blog. "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."

This is perhaps the biggest signal from Microsoft that it's committed to moving away from siloing off its work and becoming more open overall. By pulling off its largest acquisition since the $26 billion acquisition of LinkedIn in 2016, the company gets a platform universally known by developers.

GitHub was founded in 2008 with the goal of facilitating collaboration between software developers. In time, it grew into one of the world's largest repositories of code.

This announcement has provoked a backlash from several developers as they see the death of a community-driven platform that is crucial to open source software development.

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