After three years in office, GitHub CEO Nat Friedman announced that he would step down and return to his entrepreneurial roots

In 2018, Microsoft announced the official acquisition of GitHub, and Microsoft Vice President Nat Friedman will serve as the new CEO of GitHub.

On November 3, 2021, GitHub CEO Nat Friedman announced that he would step down after three years in office and return to his entrepreneurial roots.

In a blog entitled "Thank you, GitHub", Nat Friedman stated:

"Considering all the achievements we have achieved, and my more than five years of glory at Microsoft, I decided it was time to go back to my entrepreneurial roots,"

"I will continue my next adventure: supporting, mentoring, and investing in founders and developers who are using technology to create the future and respond to some of the biggest opportunities today."

On the same day, Thomas Dohmke, chief product officer of GitHub, announced in a blog entitled "Building the next phase of GitHub, together" that he would take over the company's CEO position on November 15, and GitHub will continue to operate independently of Microsoft.

Nat Friedman: Serving GitHub is the honor of my life

NatFriedman learned programming when he was 6 years old, and thus embarked on the road of development.

In the 1990s, Nat was already active in the open source software community, and that was where he discovered Linux.

Nat graduated from the Department of Computer and Mathematics at MIT in 1999. After graduation, he founded Ximian (formerly Helix Code, a software service developer based on Linux systems), which was later acquired by Novell.

During Novell, Nat led the release of the Linux desktop system SUSE. This operating system has attracted more than 6000 Windows developers to "surrender", and they have switched from Windows and Office machines to SUSE and OpenOffice.

Beginning in the Ximian period, Nat and his partner Miguel de Lcaza co-founded Xamarin, and jointly launched the open source code sharing project Mono, and experienced a series of issues such as company acquisitions and patent risks.

Although Nat has also founded other companies, Mono is a line that has run through the past ten years. If a person is willing to persist in doing one thing for ten years outside the work of making a living, that thing is probably his mission. It can be said that open source is Nat’s business card .

In 2016, Xamarin was acquired by Microsoft. As part of the acquisition, Nat officially joined Microsoft.

On June 5, 2018, Microsoft Vice President Nat became the CEO of GitHub, emphasizing that GitHub will operate as an independent entity to maintain its product philosophy and deep-rooted connections with the open source community.

In the blog, Nat Friedman stated:

"It is a lifetime honor to serve this global developer community as the CEO of GitHub."

"My biggest feeling for the past three years is thanks, and the reason lies with everyone on GitHub."

In addition, Nat also mentioned his successor Thomas on the blog, stating:

"Under his leadership, I am extremely excited about the future of GitHub."

Thomas Dohmke: Build a better GitHub for all developers

Thomas Dohmke started to learn programming on Robotron KC 87 and Commodore 64 in the 1980s and was an early Linux enthusiast.

In 2011, Dohmke founded HockeyApp; this is a tool he and others developed together to solve some of the pain points seen by iOS and Android developers at the time.

In 2014, HockeyApp was acquired by Microsoft.

In 2018, Microsoft ended its acquisition of GitHub, and Dohmke switched to GitHub at the same time.

In August 2021, Dohmke was appointed Chief Product Officer of GitHub.

In his blog, Dohmke affirmed Nat’s contribution to GitHub. He wrote in the article:

"The past three years have been extraordinary for GitHub, and I firmly believe that we are at the beginning of the golden age of developer tools. Let us start the next phase of building GitHub together."