Microsoft continues its forays into open source with the announced purchase of GitHub. Microsoft had embraced open source by offering Linux on Azure and then becoming more open to a less closed architecture. Microsoft's partnership with Docker, an open source container, further hinted at their agenda. Microsoft, post-Ballmer, have changed their mindset tremendously when it comes to development. Their acquisition of GitHub is their way of getting more developers into the Microsoft ecosystem. Not just Microsoft developers, but the greater community of open source developers. Now they can target those developers when they get GitHub to use Visual Studio, Azure and SQL Server. At the same time Microsoft will remain platform agnostic to what goes on, meaning they won't interfere with the open source community, but rather "help" them develop solutions. Microsoft will benefit by "acquiring" new skills and technologies from the open source community. Die hard developers will leave GitHub like some already did by going to other code repositories like GitLab or BitBucket. Many crypto projects are also on GitHub, even Bitcoin. Now that Microsoft supposedly "controls" this ecosystem, will they play fair? This appears like the centralization of what was supposed to be a community that shared and tested code. That may be the case knowing Microsoft is the new owner. The open source community favors a decentralized repository that is not owned by anyone. GitHub wasn't really making any money either so Microsoft buying it does seem like it is their move into capturing the larger development market. The big winner in this are the founders of GitHub.
