GitHub Is Acquired by Microsoft

Microsoft announced in June 2018 that it would acquire GitHub for $7.5 billion in stock. The deal was striking because Microsoft’s relationship with open source had changed dramatically since the era when company leaders treated Linux as a threat.

GitHub had become core infrastructure for software development. Git repositories stored source history, pull requests coordinated review, issues tracked work, and integrations connected builds, deployments, and security tools. Millions of open-source projects depended on the service.

Microsoft kept GitHub operating as a separate platform and later integrated it more deeply with Azure, Visual Studio Code, and developer services. The acquisition showed that control of developer workflow and collaboration could be strategically as valuable as ownership of an operating system.