Cryptocurrency Community Reacts to Microsoft’s Github Acquistion For $7.5 Billion

Microsoft Acquires Github For $7.5 Billion: Bitcoin Developers Call For an Exit

Bitcoin top developers were among the first to react with anger to the news about Microsoft acquiring GitHub in a deal worth at least $7 billion.

Since what was expected to be the official announcement of the agreement on Monday, the news has led to multiple calls to remove Bitcoin activity from the code repository.

We're thrilled to announce that we've entered into an acquisition agreement with @Microsoft! https://t.co/4DezuXTJfV pic.twitter.com/LUZxjXFVVw

— GitHub (@github) June 4, 2018

Following the agreement, Github has stated that it will strive to remain independent. CEO and co-founder Chris Wanstrath resigned in August last year, and executives have not been able to find a suitable replacement since then.

The Bitcoin project has long used the website as a global engagement environment. As expected, news of a corporate takeover did not impress the most important community personalities, who demanded that Bitcoin's activity immediately take place elsewhere.

Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella weighs in on the company's $7.5 billion GitHub purchase. Watch the whole interview ▶️https://t.co/J1pBvWHGbV pic.twitter.com/8g6FKOVIBJ

— Bloomberg Technology (@technology) June 4, 2018

Wladimir J. van der Laan, Bitcoin's senior developer, wrote from his Twitter account that the project's developers effectively abandoned GitHub. Many contributors to the bitcoin core felt that they preferred to move to a long-term, independently hosted infrastructure. And already, this is going faster than later.

“No real hurry, but I expect this is the beginning of a long painful road of (GitHub) toward obsolence (sic), possibly ending the same way as codeplex did.”

In social media people reacted saying that Microsoft will end up slowing down the potential of the project.

On Sunday, two days after Microsoft's rumors began to circulate, the company reported ten times the usual number of projects migrating amid efforts to keep up with demand. “We are expanding our fleet to try to keep up,” the authorities announced, reproducing data confirming the giant peak in migration from GitHub.

https://twitter.com/mdudas/status/1003660727717154818

https://twitter.com/fart/status/1003683724905443328

We already have a decentralized GitHub. It's called Git. The fact that ease of use made the centralized service GitHub indistinguishable from the decentralized Git protocol should be a lesson to us all. It can happen to us.

— Alex Van de Sande (avsa.eth) (@avsa) June 4, 2018

EOS, a pre-product network that found a critical bug right before mainnet launch: 12B

GitHub, 10-year old application with 30 million monthly active users, awesome UX, and extremely strong network effect: 7B

If this is not irrational exuberance then I don’t know what is.

— Qiao Wang (@QWQiao) June 5, 2018

I'm having trouble articulating it, but I feel like a deal like Microsoft/Github would've provoked way more freakout/outrage like 10 years ago, then now. Seems like Microsoft has made pretty big strides in making people like it more.

— Joe Weisenthal (@TheStalwart) June 4, 2018

Github sold for $7.5B is the best example of #BUIDL— an amazing new open sourced protocol (Git) is unlocked by great engineers shipping exactly the software everyone needs to actually use the protocol (Github). Great UX and shipping matters.

— Garry() (@garrytan) June 4, 2018