Microsoft in the early 2000s was known to be critical of the kind of open-source program built in GitHub, which hosts 27 million software developers working on 80 million repositories of code. Open-source software allows developers to improve and share code, an approach that threatened Microsoft’s business model. But under Nadella, Microsoft has used open-source models on some significant cloud and developer products itself. The company is now one of the biggest contributors to GitHub, and as Nadella moves the company away from complete dependence on the Windows operating system to more in-house development on Linux, the company needs new ways to connect with the broader developer community.
Many corporations, including Microsoft and Google use GitHub to store their corporate code and to collaborate. It’s also a social network of sorts for developers. GitHub has nevertheless posted significant losses, and it has been searching for a new CEO for nine months. GitHub announced in August that it was looking for a CEO to replace Chris Wanstrath, one of the company’s co-founders. In the interim, chief business officer Julio Avalos joined the company’s board of directors and took over much of the day-to-day leadership of the company.
Microsoft has been in talks with GitHub on and off for a few years.
