Acquired avatar

Dexa/Acquired

Learn more
Published Jun 6, 2018

Season 2, Episode 9: GitHub

Exploring Microsoft's $7.5 billion acquisition of GitHub, Ben Gilbert and David Rosenthal delve into the strategic motives behind the purchase, the integration challenges, and how GitHub's open source evolution and social coding revolutionized software development.
Episode Highlights
Acquired logo

Topics covered

Popular Clips

Episode Highlights

  • Foundations

    The early days of open source software laid the foundation for platforms like GitHub. explains that managing software projects was initially straightforward when everyone worked on the same machine, but it became complex with the advent of the client-server model 1. The rise of the Internet and distributed software development necessitated a new model, leading to the creation of Bitkeeper and eventually Git 2.

    Bitkeeper was used for the development of Linux, even though it was paid software, highlighting the evolving relationship between open source and proprietary tools.

    ---

    Git, developed by Linus Torvalds, quickly gained popularity in the open source community, setting the stage for GitHub's emergence 2.

       

    Social Coding

    GitHub revolutionized open source practices by introducing the concept of social coding. Tom Preston-Werner and Chris Wanstrath created a platform that allowed developers to interact, share, and collaborate on code seamlessly 3. This innovation coincided with the explosive growth of open source projects, transforming GitHub into a central hub for developers worldwide 4.

    The proliferation of open source tools led to GitHub becoming a badge of honor for developers, showcasing their contributions and impact on projects.

    ---

    GitHub's success was also fueled by its freemium model, which perfectly balanced growth and monetization, making it one of the best freemium models ever devised 5.

Related Episodes