Individuals can use GitHub for free. But there are monthly subscription charges for extra storage, development tools and private repositories. The company does not disclose its revenue, but analysts estimate it is running at $200 million a year.
The open-source model was once anathema to Microsoft, the largest commercial software company, which had favored keeping its code proprietary. Steven A. Ballmer, Microsoft’s former chief executive, once called Linux, the popular open-source operating system, a “cancer” in the body of the technology business.
But Microsoft has come to embrace open-source tools. Today, Microsoft is the most active corporation on GitHub, with more than two million contributions of code to GitHub projects.
GitHub, seeking to establish a profitable business, has increasingly hosted corporate software work on its platform. Those projects have typically used open-source software development techniques while keeping some code proprietary.
Executives from both companies insisted that GitHub would remain technologically neutral, welcoming developers using any code or any cloud service, rather than a Microsoft walled garden. The proof, analysts say, will be in how GitHub operates under Microsoft ownership.
“Developers by their nature are often suspicious of corporate ambitions,” said Ed Anderson, an analyst at Gartner. “Microsoft will have to demonstrate its willingness to put the interests of developers ahead of any Microsoft-specific agenda.”
The $7.5 billion purchase, an all-stock deal, is the second-largest acquisition Microsoft has made since Mr. Nadella became chief executive in early 2014. The bigger deal came in 2016, when Microsoft bought LinkedIn, the social network for professional workers, for $26.2 billion. (GitHub ranks third in Microsoft’s history, also behind the $8.5 billion purchase of Skype in 2011.)
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