news Microsoft buys GitHub, the largest free software platform

[dEEpEst]

GitHub, which has more than 28 million users, will become part of the Microsoft Cloud Intelligence business

 

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Microsoft offices in New York. ROY ROCHLIN AFP

Microsoft has reached an agreement to acquire GitHub, a collaborative software development platform, for 7,500 million dollars (6,406 million euros) in shares, as announced by the giant of Redmond, which expects to close the purchase later this year.

After the closing of the transaction, GitHub, which has more than 28 million users, will present its accounts as part of the business of Intelligence in the Cloud, said Microsoft, who is confident that the acquisition will be reflected in their accounts for the year. fiscal 2020 with a minimum dilutive impact of less than 1% on the earnings per share for the years 2019 and 2020.

Microsoft Corporate vice president, Nat Friedman, will assume the position of CEO of GitHub after the acquisition, while the current head of the platform, Chris Wanstrath, will become Microsoft's technical partner, reporting to Microsoft's executive vice president, Scott Guthrie, to work on strategic software initiatives.

Microsoft ensures that GitHub will maintain its distinctive approach of putting developers first and will continue to operate independently to offer an open platform to all developers and industries. In this way, GitHub users will be able to continue using the programming languages, tools and operating systems of their choice for their projects.

"Microsoft is a platform that puts developers first and by joining forces with GitHub we reinforce our commitment to freedom, openness and innovation," said Satya Nadella, CEO of Microsoft.

For his part, Wanstrath highlighted the "bright future" for software development, underlining that the union with Microsoft will help make it a reality. "Its scale, tools and global cloud will play a huge role in making GitHub even more valuable to developers around the world," he added.

GitHub is a repository of online code very popular among open source developers. The price paid by Microsoft, much higher than its last valuation, indicates the interest of the Redmond company to gain a foothold in the world of free software.

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