The European Commission has approved the $7.5 billion acquisition of GitHub by Microsoft, which is anticipated to be completed by the end of this calendar year. Speaking on the approval, the Commission stated that Microsoft would not have any incentive to undermine the open nature of GitHub’s platform and effective competition in the relevant markets would continue.
Further from the reports, the Commission cleared the case unconditionally saying that this transaction would not raise any competition concerns in any of the affected markets. The Commission had mentioned that both the companies, GitHub and Microsoft, provide tools that individuals and organizations use while developing and releasing software.
Chief Executive of Microsoft, Satya Nadella, was quoted saying that Microsoft, which is a developer-first company, will strengthen its commitment to developer freedom, innovation and openness, by joining forces with GitHub. Apparently, the alliance of these two companies will empower the developers in achieving more at each stage of the development lifecycle, bringing developer tools and services of Microsoft to new audiences and accelerating use of GitHub by enterprises.
Nat Friedman, vice president of Microsoft Corporate and founder of Xamarin, who is also an open source veteran, will supposedly assume the position of GitHub’s CEO. Chris Wanstrath, who is the current Chief Executive of GitHub, would be taking the role of a Microsoft technical fellow and will report to Executive Vice President Scott Guthrie.
For the record, Microsoft had declared it would acquire the world’s leading open source software development platform GitHub in June this year. The software development platform has a huge community of more than 28 million developers around the world. GitHub also hosts a growing network of developers in almost each and every country, representing over 1.5 million companies across retail, financial services, technology, manufacturing and healthcare, among others.