Microsoft Purchases Code-Sharing Website GitHub

One of the world's biggest tech companies just bought one of the biggest software development platforms. Microsoft Corp. on Monday morning confirmed the $7.5 billion purchase of code-sharing website GitHub Inc.

Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella called the move a way for Microsoft to “strengthen our commitment to developer freedom, openness and innovation.” GitHub had previously been privately owned, and the $7.5 billion comes in the form of Microsoft stock.

The deal is Microsoft’s most expensive acquisition since paying $26 billion for LinkedIn in December 2016.

San Francisco-based GitHub launched in 2008 as a way for software developers to upload, share and use code in a variety of languages for their projects. According to Microsoft’s news release, the site boasts more than 28 million users, who share their code and tinker with that of others in software development.

Some developers were wary of the idea of a private, open-source code repository coming under the wing of a corporate giant like Microsoft, according to MarketWatch. There is at least some expectation that Microsoft will incentivize developers to support Microsoft’s Azure cloud platform, but in the Monday release, the company behind Windows and Xbox tried to assure developers that GitHub will remain as open and free as ever.

“GitHub will retain its developer-first ethos and will operate independently to provide an open platform for all developers in all industries,” Microsoft said. “Developers will continue to be able to use the programming languages, tools and operating systems of their choice for their projects — and will still be able to deploy their code to any operating system, any cloud and any device.”

Microsoft once had its own open-source code platform called CodePlex, which it shut down in 2017. Microsoft seemingly understood that GitHub was the preferred platform for developers and decided to acquire it instead of competing against it.

Shares of Microsoft (MSFT) were up 0.6 percent Monday.