Github hits the 150 million developers mark as Satya Nadella says the goal is to touch one billion

Github

Popular software development platform Github has hit a new milestone. In a blog post, Github CEO, Thomas Dohmke revealed that the platform now has 150 million developers. Furthermore, the platform is adding GitHub Copilot by launching Github Copilot Free.

According to Dohmke, Copilot Free gives developers the choice between Anthropic’s Claude 3.5 Sonnet or OpenAI’s GPT-4o model. “You can ask a coding question, explain existing code, or have it find a bug,” he said.

Dohmke also said that GitHub has a long history of offering free products and services to developers. “Starting with free open source and public collaboration, we added free private repos, free minutes for GitHub Actions and GitHub Codespaces, and free package and release storage,” he said in the blog post.

What does Copilot Free offer to developers?

With the Copilot Free plan, developers receive around 2,000 code completions per month (approximately 80 per working day). Furthermore, they get 50 chat requests per month along with access to AI models like GPT-4o and Claude 3.5 Sonnet.

GitHub has also announced that GitHub Copilot is now available for free within Visual Studio Code (VS Code), aiming to make AI-assisted coding more accessible to developer.

In a post on Twitter and LinkedIn, Microsoft CEO Satya Nadella called the move a “game changer.” This offering is integrated directly into VS Code, allowing developers to utilise AI tools without additional installations, said Nadella in the post.

Nadella also said that Microsoft’s ambition is to get “one billion developers on Github.” Nadella also said that the “joy of coding is back” and that he has been using Github and his “weekends have changed and become much more fun.”