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Microsoft wins over skeptics. Wins back developers.  ↦

Like many out there, I was a skeptic of Microsoft’s acquisition of GitHub. To be honest, in some ways I still am. We’ve been tracking this topic very closely over the last several years. What’s particularly interesting to me is this story — Scott Guthrie wrote a proposal in 2014 to acquire GitHub and filed it away in a drawer.

In 2014, Microsoft Corp. cloud chief Scott Guthrie wrote up a proposal to acquire GitHub Inc. Then he filed the plan away in a drawer. Every once in a while he’d take the plan out and look at it, and then return it to the cabinet. Guthrie felt Microsoft just wasn’t ready to acquire the popular open-source company…

Fast forward 5 years…GitHub has been acquired and Nat Friedman (CEO of GitHub) says “GitHub has to be neutral and GitHub has to be independent. Developers want choice. GitHub can’t have any favoritism.”

With that kind of intention and posture, my skepticism is eroding.


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