Just a couple of days after news emerged of Microsoft engaged in serious talks over a possible acquisition of GitHub, Bloomberg reports that an agreement has already been reached and could be announced as early as this Monday.
Earlier reports suggested that Microsoft had been looking to acquire the source code repository for years. Possibly given the imminent departure of GitHub's CEO Chris Wanstrath, talks regarding a possible buyout were reignited quite recently. Following the latest advancement, one of the people involved with the release of information regarding the deal has also indicated that the web-hosting service chose to sell the company to Microsoft instead of going public because it was impressed with the tech giant's CEO, Satya Nadella. Notably, the Redmond-based firm has open sourced various components of Windows under Nadella's leadership.
Contrary to its original stance on open source software development, over the past few years, Microsoft has become more and more receptive to the open source community, joining the Open Source Initiative (OSI) as a full member back in September. Late last year, the tech giant completely shut down its free, open source project hosting site, CodePlex, partnering with GitHub for seamless migration of the projects present at the time. The tech giant also boasts the highest number of contributors to the online repository, further exhibiting the positive relationship between the two.
GitHub was last valued at $2 billion back in 2015, although with no official statement being made regarding this alleged agreement as of yet, it is unclear how much has been paid by Microsoft in order to undertake a buyout. It will also be interesting to see whether this acquisition induces any ramifications on Google executive Sridhar Ramaswamy's possible selection as GitHub's next CEO.
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