Microsoft has completed its $7.5 bn acquisition of GitHub, Nat Friedman to be CEO

**Microsoft** has closed its $7.5 billion acquisition of **GitHub** , a leading software development platform which brings more than 31 million developers to create, collaborate, share and build on each other’s work. Nat Friedman, the former CEO of Xamarin (acquired by Microsoft in 2016), is taking over as GitHub’s CEO, Microsoft said in a statement on 26 October. [caption id=“attachment_4499213” align=“alignnone” width=“1280”] Representational image.[/caption] Microsoft announced in June that it had reached an agreement to acquire GitHub. In a blog post on 26 October, Friedman said that GitHub would operate independently as a community, platform, and business. So 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. “This means that GitHub will retain its developer-first values, distinctive spirit, and open extensibility. We will always support developers in their choice of any language, license, tool, platform, or cloud,” Friedman said. In the coming days, GitHub will focus on improving core scenarios like search, notifications, issues/projects, and its mobile experience, the new CEO said.