Microsoft Corp (NASDAQ:MSFT) confirmed that it will acquire software-building platform GitHub in a US$7.5bn stock deal.
The popular coding platform is used by more than 28 million developers, including tech giants like Apple Inc (NASDAQ:AAPL), Amazon.com Inc (NASDAQ:AMZN) and Google (NASDAQ:GOOG).
READ: Microsoft buys conversational AI firm Semantic Machines
Developers commonly share and collaborate on projects and Microsoft promised to maintain open access to the platform.
However, not all developers were happy about the acquisition or convinced that it would remain an open platform. Rival GitLab claims that it has seen a 10x increase of developers moving their code repositories over to its service.
We're seeing 10x the normal daily amount of repositories #movingtogitlab https://t.co/7AWH7BmMvM We're scaling our fleet to try to stay up. Follow the progress on https://t.co/hN0ce379SC and @movingtogitlab
— GitLab (@gitlab) June 3, 2018
“When it comes to our commitment to open source, judge us by the actions we have taken in the recent past, our actions today, and in the future,” said Microsoft in a statement.
Microsoft’s last big acquisition was in 2016 when the tech company acquired networking platform LinkedIn in a US$26.2bn deal.
Shares of Microsoft were up around 1% to US$101.72 in Monday afternoon trading.