Microsoft is a different company to what it was in the 90s and early-00s – one where it aggressively go after any project or company that got in its way. Now, it is a company of love and kindness. Well, nearly.
According to GitHub’s latest statistics (via Business Insider), Microsoft is the top open source contributor on the platform, putting it above the likes of Facebook and Google:
For those unaware, GitHub is where developers share code, projects and collaborate together. It is also a place of storing code, as part Git, a tool for storing history revisions of code and reverting code. Open Source means freely available software, where people can contribute to the projects to help nurture them.
These latest statistics show Microsoft’s commitment to supporting open source projects, particularly in-line with one of Satya Nadella’s mottos of “Microsoft loves Linux”. It certainly paints Microsoft in a positive light when it has the most employees working on an open source project,. These stats, however, only count public projects and contributors, not those who work privately – so these numbers aren’t exact, but give an indication.