Original title: Microsoft's acquisition of GitHub shocked the industry: causing developers' trust problems
The news of Microsoft's acquisition of GitHub, a popular online code sharing and collaboration platform, shocked the entire software development community on Monday. Some people think it's good, others think it's frightening.
The worry mainly comes from some conflicts in the history of the open source community, who will freely publish and share their works on the Internet, while Microsoft has become the world's top enterprise by selling proprietary software and protecting its technology. In 2011, Microsoft executives also called open source "intellectual property destroyers" and believed that they violated the "American way" of business. Steve Ballmer, the former CEO of Microsoft, even called the open source community 'cancer'.
Under the leadership of CEO Satya NADELLA, Microsoft has focused on cloud computing and established a new partnership. But not all software developers are aware of this change, and not everyone trusts the company.
Jacques mattheij, a programmer, wrote: 'Microsoft has always been against the open source community and other companies, abusing its position. 'This person has even deleted the GitHub account as a result.
Microsoft's $7.5 billion acquisition of GitHub. In order to ease users' worries, Microsoft decided to let GitHub continue to develop independently, and will support the development of multiple programming languages through a series of tools, and also make it run on multiple operating systems. In fact, many developers who want GitHub to succeed also admit that the 10-year-old company needs a life-saving straw. Before the deal was announced, the company had been looking for a new CEO for nine years and had not yet made a profit.
However, some people went to Twitter to express their uneasiness and threatened to switch to other products.
But Chris wanstrath, GitHub co-founder and former CEO, reassured that 'it's normal for people to have doubts. I never thought that would happen a few years ago. 'microsoft's actions over the past few years show that they will support the development of the open source community, 'he said.
Some developers are also optimistic. Guillermo Rauch, a GitHub user and cloud computing startup executive, said the deal was "one of the best things in the open source community.".
NADELLA said in an interview with Bloomberg TV that it is a key element for GitHub to accept Microsoft. 'we have to win trust. He said: 'our recent actions should placate all developers and let them know Microsoft's intentions. '
When open source software became popular in the early 2000s, Microsoft was the biggest opponent of this model. But in the latter part of Mr. Ballmer's tenure, the company's attitude began to moderate. At that time, Ballmer sent an important deputy to attend the Linux conference in 2004, and later reached an agreement with Oracle to provide the company's Linux system through Microsoft cloud computing services.
After NADELLA took office, the company further increased the compatibility of open source software, and increased product development efforts. NADELLA even said on Monday: 'we're trying to hold open source down. '
But there are still many developers who don't trust Microsoft. Gitlab, the rival of GitHub, is trying to take advantage of this uncertainty to attract many developers to move to the company's platform.
However, Microsoft still hopes that suspicious developers can give them a chance. 'we want developers to see what we've done - both recently and in the past few years, our collaboration with developers, what we've done in the open source community, and what we're going to do in the future. We believe that the developer priority and independence principles we set for the open source community are suitable to help GitHub continue to grow and continue to win the trust of developers. '