GitHub as the world's largest community of developers is getting an improvement.
A year after acquiring GitHub for $7.5 billion, Microsoft has purchased Pull Panda to ramp up the software development platform with more collaborative tools.
Pull Panda that is one-and-a-half year old, provides:
- Pull Reminders, which allow developers to notify developers that a collaborator needs their review.
- Pull Analytics, which provide statistics on everything from wait times to top contributors.
- Pull Assigner, which helps automatically distribute code across teams.
With the acquisition, Microsoft wants to use Pull Panda's technology to improve code-reviewing workflows on GitHub.
And with the acquisition, Microsoft is making the three Pull Panda's tools available for free in the form of a single GitHub Marketplace application called 'Pull Panda' (https://github.com/marketplace/pull-panda).
According to Abi Noda, Pull Panda’s founder and CEO, announcing the move:
"I will be joining the GitHub team to integrate Pull Panda and continue to grow its features as part of the core product."
It’s easy to see why Microsoft went after Pull Panda to improve GitHub.
Given that GitHub has grown into a fully-fledged control platform, in addition to becoming one of the largest repositories for hosting open source software, Pull Panda would benefit the platform by margins, and this would improve the community's collaboration of teams in developing software.
Microsoft is discontinuing Enterprise plan subscriptions but continues to offer existing Enterprise plan customers support through Pull Panda's on-premises offering.
Microsoft also said that it has plans to integrate Pull Panda's tools directly into GitHub.
"It has been a pleasure and honor to serve such wonderful customers," continued Noda.
"This journey would not have been possible without your ongoing feedback and encouragement. I look forward to continuing to work together to improve how teams build software!"