On the Eve of the Collapse of the GitHub Empire: Source Code Leak, Split with an 18-Year Loyal Fan, and Microsoft Loses 150 Million Developers

GitHub is experiencing an unprecedented major collapse.

Recently, the global open - source technology circle has witnessed an astonishing rift.

Mitchell Hashimoto, an 18 - year - old fan of GitHub and the well - known developer of the Ghostty terminal, posted a sensational "break - up letter" that was heart - wrenching in every word:

GitHub disappoints me every day.

I want it to be better, but I want to code more. I can no longer code on GitHub. Sorry, after 18 years, I have to leave.

If a platform locks you out for several hours every day, it is no longer suitable for serious work.

Subsequently, Ghostty packed up all its assets and left resolutely.

His departure is just the tip of the iceberg of an avalanche.

GitHub: On the Brink of Survival

In recent months, giants such as Citibank and Intel have expressed their dissatisfaction with Microsoft due to the continuous failures of GitHub. Even OpenAI has started to explore self - built solutions.

In order to appease customers, Microsoft has to issue a large number of Credits to enterprise users to compensate for the losses, which has directly led to a continuous decline in profits.

The most serious incident occurred last month: An accidentally triggered unpublished feature on GitHub caused a large number of repositories to "roll back", and users' recent code modifications disappeared directly. Many enterprises have been forced to migrate.

Nearly eight years ago, when Microsoft acquired GitHub for $7.5 billion, global programmers were full of concerns.

Sure enough, after a short golden period, this "holy land for programmers" that hosts more than 150 million developers and 1 billion code repositories worldwide is now standing at a crossroads of survival in an extremely tragic way.

Over 3,800 Repositories "Wiped Out" by Hackers

Even more, a recent security storm has completely exposed GitHub's vulnerabilities.

 On May 21, 2026, a piece of news instantly detonated the hacker forum BreachForums: A hacker organization publicly put up for sale the core source code of GitHub, asking for only $50,000!

They wrote arrogantly:

Everything on the main platform is here. I'm happy to send samples to interested buyers to verify the authenticity. This is not extortion. We're too lazy to blackmail GitHub. As long as someone takes the offer, we'll completely destroy the data. If no buyer is found, we'll make it public for free soon.

Subsequently, GitHub officially confirmed helplessly that more than 3,800 internal code repositories had indeed been invaded.

The origin of this disaster is incredibly absurd: A GitHub internal developer installed a poisoned malicious VS Code extension on their work device. After the credentials were leaked, more than 3,800 repositories were compromised.

VS Code and GitHub both belong to Microsoft and should be an "in - house ecological combination". However, the lack of a high - intensity review mechanism for VS Code extensions has become a perfect breakthrough for hackers.

Since VS Code frequently prompts developers to install various extensions, these "Trojan horses" can freely access local files, system terminals, etc.

When a GitHub engineer downloaded the malicious extension, their long - term valid personal access credentials were instantly intercepted by hackers!

For a platform based on "code security and hosting", having its source code publicly put up for sale is undoubtedly a resounding slap in the face.

This is just the tip of the iceberg.

In March this year, a security agency discovered a 0 - day high - risk vulnerability in GitHub's internal Git infrastructure.

If exploited, attackers could directly access millions of public and private code repositories worldwide without restrictions, and the consequences would be a hundred times more terrifying than this!

Management Overhaul: No More CEO, Reduced to a Microsoft Vassal

Behind the frequent security and technical incidents is the "leaderless state" within GitHub in the past year.

Last summer, Thomas Dohmke, the former CEO beloved by the community, suddenly resigned. Microsoft then made a decision that shocked all employees: completely abolish the GitHub CEO position.

GitHub CEO Thomas Dohmke

Dohmke thanked everyone: "GitHub has over 1 billion repositories and branches, and over 150 million developers. It has never been as strong as it is now. Thanks to your unremitting efforts, GitHub Copilot has brought about the biggest change in software development since the advent of the PC."

For seven years, GitHub has always maintained the pride of being an "independent subsidiary". However, last summer, it was incorporated into the newly formed CoreAI team.

This drastic change has directly pushed GitHub's senior executives into an embarrassing situation: They have lost the channel to communicate with Microsoft's top management and are forced to report to Parikh, the head of the CoreAI team and a former Meta executive.

However, Parikh is extremely unpopular within the company. It was he who insisted on abolishing the GitHub CEO position.

"There is basically no GitHub here anymore. It is now completely a department of Microsoft," a senior employee said angrily. "The management and technical backbones are fleeing in droves."

Subsequently, there has been a loss of top - tier talent: Former CEO Dohmke founded the next - generation developer platform Entire and poached 11 people; 34 - year veteran Julia Liuson left; Jared Palmer, the senior vice - president of product engineering, transferred to the Xbox team; and the chief revenue officer resigned.

The current CTO, Vladimir Fedorov, is aggressively promoting the project of migrating GitHub to Azure servers. This complex MySQL cluster relocation has directly led to a series of outages in the past year.

So far, GitHub's R & D, finance, and marketing have been comprehensively strangled and devoured. There is disunity within the company, and technical backbones are leaving.

GitHub's once - proud "pure developer culture" is being eroded by Microsoft's bureaucratic and powerful system!

Loss of Moat: Cursor and Claude Code Deliver a Devastating Blow

The external outages and internal turmoil have opened a huge rift for predators.

Once, Copilot was almost synonymous with AI - assisted programming.

However, in 2024, Cursor emerged out of nowhere. While GitHub Copilot is still in the code - completion stage of "you write a line, I guess the next line", Cursor can generate an entire module with one click by understanding the entire project context.

In 2025, Claude Code delivered an even more devastating blow - it can not only write code but also automatically complete complex error - checking, testing, and multi - file collaborative modifications.

There is unprecedented panic within Microsoft. According to reports, Jay Parikh warned with a stern face in a meeting that GitHub is facing a "death threat".

Parikh's core fear is that once developers get used to completing all development on Cursor, they will no longer upload their code to GitHub.

For this reason, Microsoft seriously considered acquiring Cursor, but hesitated for a while, and then Cursor was snapped up by SpaceX.

Even more laughable is that Claude Code is so good that tens of thousands of engineers in Microsoft's Windows and Office departments have all become die - hard fans of CC, which has completely frustrated Microsoft's top management!

Rajesh Jha issued a strict order to all employees to forcibly take back all CC licenses by the end of June and force engineers to go back to using GitHub Copilot CLI.

Financial Avalanche: A "Subsidy Black Hole" That Loses More as It Earns

Moreover, GitHub's commercial operation is also deeply mired in trouble and is even starting to backfire on Microsoft.

On the surface, GitHub's data still looks good. As of the end of 2025, the number of Copilot paying users exceeded 4.7 million, and GitHub's annual recurring revenue exceeded the $3 billion mark.

But behind the beautiful numbers, it's all Microsoft's losses.

With the explosion of AI, GitHub's traffic has increased by 14 times. However, the AI functions for code hosting and open - source projects are completely free.

The inference cost of running AI models remains high, and the computing power cost consumed by heavy users far exceeds the monthly subscription fee of $10 - the more it sells, the more it loses.

At Microsoft's earnings conference call in April this year, the CFO rarely admitted that the significant increase in the usage of GitHub Copilot has directly pulled down the gross profit margin of the entire core cloud business.

Facing pressure from Wall Street, GitHub announced last month that it would abolish the monthly all - you - can - use model and fully switch to "pay - as - you - go". Once the credits are used up, the AI service will be immediately cut off.

This ugly move has completely enraged developers!

The global IT service giant NinjaOne immediately publicly stated that it is comprehensively guiding engineers to abandon GitHub and switch to the Claude Code ecosystem.

Will GitHub Die?

This year, Microsoft's stock price has fallen by more than 10% in total, ranking at the bottom among the "Seven Giants of US Stocks".

Its developer ecosystem cornerstone, GitHub, is pushing everything into the abyss.

In order to get rid of its dependence on OpenAI and Anthropic, CoreAI has ordered the comprehensive collection of all code to train Microsoft's own native