15 years later, Microsoft morged my diagram
By Vincent Driessen on Wednesday, February 18, 2026 A few days ago, people started tagging me on Bluesky and Hacker News about a diagram on Microsoft’s Learn portal. It looked… familiar. In 2010, I wrote A successful Git branching model and created a diagram to go with it. I designed that diagram in Apple Keynote, at the time obsessing over the colors, the curves, and the layout until it clearly communicated how branches relate to each other over time. I also published the source file so others could build on it. That diagram has since spread everywhere: in books, talks, blog posts, team wikis, and YouTube videos. I never minded. That was the whole point: sharing knowledge and letting the internet take it by storm! What I did not expect was for Microsoft, a trillion-dollar…
