Microsoft has actively started collaborating and supporting open source activities in past few years. But surprisingly, the company is now the leading contributor on repository hosting platform GitHub with over 16,000 contributors.
According to the data published by GitHub, Microsoft brought 16,419 open source contributors to the online platform followed by Facebook and Google.
Microsoft made its entry to the open source world by sharing .Net framework in the recent past. The Redmond company apparently wants developers to understand its server-side stack. Interestingly, most of the major Microsoft technologies and infrastructure are based on the open source framework.
Apart from .Net, Microsoft has so far contributed major projects like Chakra JavaScript engine, Visual Studio’s MSBuild compiling engine and Computation Networks Toolkit.
GitHub CEO Chris Wanstrath said that the open source community was contributing more to .Net than Microsoft’s internal team. GitHub now has a big repository of open source projects contributed by Microsoft, he added.
Microsoft’s new approach of building technology and services that can benefit open source developers has heavily benefited the community. The software giant is also working with Canonical to launch the final release of its Ubuntu Windows 10 project. This will enable developers to work on Azure. The cross-platform development platform Xamarin that was acquired by Microsoft last year also recently open sourced its developer kit.
Microsoft’s CEO Satya Nadella clearly embraced the open source by saying, “Microsoft loves Linux.”
India’s big increase in new signups
Apart from Microsoft’s success as an open source enablers, the data released by GitHub shows the growth of the community in India.
India brought 76 percent increase in new signups, whereas China led the race with 97 percent increment followed by 90 percent increase in new signups by Indonesia.
