Microsoft has completed its $7.5bn acquisition of GitHub, meaning next time the code management platform has a wobble, users will finally be justified in blaming Microsoft.
Incoming GitHub chief Nat Friedman announced the closure of the deal earlier today in a bog posting. It comes a week after the EU gave the deal the thumbs up, and just days after the service crashed, ruining Monday for developers the world over.
Friedman said he will start his new gig on Monday, now that all those tricky acquisition related tasks are out of the way, and that the newly minted MS subsidiary has three objectives:
- Ensuring GitHub is the best place to run productive communities and teams
- Making GitHub accessible to more developers around the world
- Reliability, security, and performance
“We will start by focusing on the daily experience of using GitHub and will double down on our paper cuts project. 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.”
Friedman’s biggest challenge may be persuading independently minded developers that it is safe to leave their code in the care of a Redmond outpost, particularly after Monday’s meltdown. Many angry tweets pointed the finger at Microsoft, despite the fact GitHub was, at that time, still a thoroughly independent company.
On the other hand, rival code repos GitLab and Atlassian’s BitBucket both boasted of a surge of new customers after Microsoft announced its bid back in June. It could be that Microsoft just has to preside over a steady as she goes regime at GitHub. For now at least.