On Monday, Microsoft announced the acquisition of Github, the world's largest open-source code repository, for $7.5 billion.
However, this announcement has sparked backlash from many developers, as they see it as the end of a community-driven platform, which is vital for the development of open source software.
Why is GitHub so important?
GitHub contains code from over 28 million developers and currently has more than 85 million pieces of code that can be contributed to or integrated into other projects.
Software giants like Microsoft have long understood the benefits of having a large developer community on their side. In fact, Microsoft became the largest contributor to open source projects on the platform in 2016 and already uses a modified version of Git to develop code for Windows.
Even big companies like Facebook and Amazon use GitHub to develop more sensitive and proprietary projects. The reason? The Git software management system makes it easy to track different versions of the software, and users also benefit from the platform's powerful network.
GitHub's last valuation was $2.5 billion in 2015, so why did Microsoft buy it for $7.5 billion?
The most likely answer is that the company seeks to leverage the way the platform works to its advantage and gain valuable insight into the projects under development on GitHub.
On top of that, there are millions of developers who use GitHub as a critical part of their software development – the same developers who are Microsoft's primary target market for cloud technologies.
What was the developers' reaction?
Developers love GitHub for its vast collection of code across multiple operating systems and languages, as well as its flexibility and decentralized nature. Now many of them are worried about what will happen to the platform after it is acquired by a large company.
As a result, developers are now turning to competing platforms like GitLab and BitBucket. In fact, GitLab has received 50,000 new projects so far since rumors of a GitHub acquisition began circulating.
As GitLab told Motherboard, the open source repository has seen a massive spike in traffic with “13,000 projects uploaded in a single hour.”
Although Microsoft has often professed its love for open source projects, the software giant must tread carefully, or there could be further "migration" from its newly acquired platform.
