Microsoft Submits Request for $7.5 Billion GitHub Acquisition from European Union

Last Friday, on September 14^th, the European Union received a request from Microsoft to approve their acquisition of GitHub for $7.5 billion. According to a Reuters report, the decision on the request is expected to be made by October 19^th.

GitHub’s website centers around using open-source coding, offering a place for developers to host their codes in multiple languages, while tracking changes. Right now, there are about 24 million developers located on the GitHub platform, which work alongside 67 million repositories.

As the two companies migrate into one, Microsoft is hoping that they can improve their cloud computing sector, strengthening it against Amazon.com as their competition. However, if the EU competition agency evaluates this acquisition and finds any particular issues, it is within their rights to launch a full investigation that could reject the purchase.

There are many community members that are concerned that Microsoft’s purchase would result in an overabundance of control over what is allowed to be posted on the coding platform. In response to a question on Twitter regarding whether the Bitcoin repository should move, Bitcoin core developer Wladimir Van der Laan tweeted a reply. He said,

“Yes. No real hurry, but I expect this is the beginning of a long painful road of gh towards obsolence, possibly ending the same way as codeplex did.”

In response to the apprehension, Microsoft Chief Executive Satya Nadella said that the GitHub platform will remain open and permitted to work with all public clouds. They have continued to work with other companies to improve their platform. Last month, for example, Microsoft’s Azure platform brought in a new Proof-of-Authority algorithm that will improve efficiency of decentralized applications that are meant for private or consortium networks.

Amazon is not far behind. In May, their computing arm collaborated with the Kaleido blockchain startup to simplify the cloud platforms that they have access to.