My twitter timeline has gone crazy this weekend with the big news about Github’s acquisition by Microsoft. For the first couple tweets, I didn’t believe it. Later on, it started to make sense. They are using this open source platform to move their projects forward, check out the number of projects they have on Github.

For the last couple days, I’ve tried to observe as much as I can. It’s finally time for me to reflect.

Let’s start with the concerns;

• In 2013, when Facebook acquired Parse, I felt great because Parse was a platform which I really enjoyed using. After the acquisition, I had expected them to provide a greater vision with the power of the Facebook. In 2015, we moved our little application to Parse. In 2016, Facebook announced that they will close down Parse. I don’t expect Microsoft to shut down Github, but every decision they will make about the Github will be criticized by the OSS community. If the Microsoft successfully overcome the trust issues after this high criticism period, it would be great. If not, life always finds a way in the open source.
• Microsoft owns Linked.in, a social network specifically designed for career and business professionals to connect. Microsoft created VS Code, a highly adopted text editor by the community. Now, Microsoft acquired Github. With the power of these platforms, they will be able to understand our techniques, habits and eventually they would try to use this power to shape software community in their favour. I would laugh at this theory a year ago, then Cambridge Analytica Scandal blew up.

On the other hand;

• Microsoft is a mature company, they are in this industry for an extremely long time now. They have learnt from the past mistakes.
• They value open source contribution. The VS Code’s repository alone has more than 52k stars on Github. As I mentioned earlier, they have more than 1800 repositories on Github. They are already using this platform and any improvement for this platform will affect them immediately. Therefore, they will be a part of the change they wish to see.
• Employees of the Microsoft tweet about the acquisition and they would like to relieve our concerns regarding to the acquisition. These people are not the ones from upper management, they are just employees like us. What they did resonates with me, it feels like a bottom up movement.
• Microsoft’s powerful connection¹ with the educational institutions will be able to introduce open source community to the students earlier.

Let’s hope the best for the community.

¹: This is an observation for Turkey.