What does Microsoft's $7.5 billion purchase of Microsoft mean for the open source community?
And what does Microsoft buying GitHub mean for DevOps and DevSecOps?
The final answer will likely be years in the making, but here are some things we already know in the first few days after the sale.
Three things we've seen so far after Microsoft buys GitHub:
1. The purchase has been fantastic news for GitHub competitors
Here is what happened to web traffic and file transfers at GitLab after Microsoft announced it was buying GitHub:
2. Most InfoSec leaders and DevOps folks are curious, not panicked
The chart above shows 98,000 imports from GitHub in a day. While that is an incredible ramp up, keep in mind that GitHub has more than 20 million users. Which means most people are taking a wait and see approach.
"I think the effect on InfoSec is still up in the air at this point," Gates Corporation CISO Sam Masiello tells SecureWorld.
"I think it is an interesting validation of the culture shift at Microsoft, though. What had previously been known as a closed source company that likely viewed resources like Github, where developers would share code, as a threat to its own model, has made an about-face over the past few years. It now has its own Microsoft Loves Open Source campaigns, supports various flavors of Linux (which has relied on the open source model for decades) within the OS, and now has acquired the largest code repository in the world. I think time will tell what the overall effect on the security and open source communities will be. My only hope is that it will be a positive one."
On Twitter, most of the comments we came across were surprised that so many were reacting "in haste" to GitHub's sale, and some were optimistic.
Have you read the Microsoft statement on its purchase of GitHub? Instead of dancing around the questions developers may have, the company came right at them:
"GitHub will retain its developer-first ethos and will operate independently to provide an open platform for all developers in all industries. Developers will continue to be able to use the programming languages, tools and operating systems of their choice for their projects—and will still be able to deploy their code to any operating system, any cloud and any device."
Won't promises like these make it much harder for Microsoft to back away from the reasons so many love GitHub?