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I've always found Github's business model interesting. What if a massive open-source organization (e.g. Fedora, Apache) decided to use it for all of their devel

by zymhan 11y ago

I've always found Github's business model interesting. What if a massive open-source organization (e.g. Fedora, Apache) decided to use it for all of their development, integrating it with continuous builds and all the associated pulls. Of course this isn't likely to happen for a number of reasons, but there are large open source projects that could put a significant load on their infrastructure if they chose to use Github as their main code versioning system.

Anderkent 11y ago
Presumably they'd get load-limited to the same degree and eventually be forced to move to something they control.
athenot 11y ago
It's the same business model that Jira used in the past, when the alternatives were Mantis, Trac and Bugzilla. They had[1] one of the better and well designed issue trackers, free for OSS projects. That turned into a great way to champion adoption within paying customers' organizations. [1] In my opinion, they have since lost that edge on the UI.
- stevoski 11y ago
  I remember seeing this new much improved UI for bug tracking on OSS, and thinking, "Thank goodness they're no longer using Bugzilla". And then using it a bit, and thinking, "I've got to get that bug tracker into the org I'm working for." Yep, it was Jira. It was a great strategy they used!
consp 11y ago
I think they should do 'ok' though it won't make you wealthy: - They collect money from businesses (who pay quite well) - They collect money from private repos (like I have for lots of my config files, no, no passwords/keys in there ;) for e.g. tex files. - The large companies probably pay some form of 'support'
discreditable 11y ago
> What if a massive open-source organization (e.g. Fedora, Apache) decided to use it This one is pretty big. https://github.com/torvalds/linux https://github.com/torvalds/linux
- dnlrn 11y ago
  This is just a mirror and not the repo the devs actually work on, so I don't think it's very taxing on the resources.
- snowwrestler 11y ago
  Sure but it's just the kernel, and that's just a mirror. Linus does not use Github to manage kernel development. In fact he's been vitriolic in the past about how Github does pull requests. I wonder how much traffic the Github Linux repo gets. Seems to me that people who want to use Linux, will go get a distro instead. And people who want to develop the kernel, will follow the kernel development process (which doesn't rely on Github).
  - discreditable 11y ago
    For a period of time when Kernel.org was breached, GitHub was the repository for Linux. [1] I remember reading a review of GitHub by him shortly after. He did not like how Pull Requests or patches worked on GitHub. I'd link it but I'm having trouble finding it. 1. http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/09/06/linus_torvalds_dumps_kernel_for_github/ http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/09/06/linus_torvalds_dumps...
kodablah 11y ago
> What if a massive open-source organization (e.g. Fedora, Apache) https://github.com/apache https://github.com/apache - Lots of mirrors but many projects use it as their main source.

by zymhan 11y ago

Anderkent 11y ago

Presumably they'd get load-limited to the same degree and eventually be forced to move to something they control.

athenot 11y ago

It's the same business model that Jira used in the past, when the alternatives were Mantis, Trac and Bugzilla. They had[1] one of the better and well designed issue trackers, free for OSS projects. That turned into a great way to champion adoption within paying customers' organizations. [1] In my opinion, they have since lost that edge on the UI.

stevoski 11y ago
I remember seeing this new much improved UI for bug tracking on OSS, and thinking, "Thank goodness they're no longer using Bugzilla". And then using it a bit, and thinking, "I've got to get that bug tracker into the org I'm working for." Yep, it was Jira. It was a great strategy they used!

consp 11y ago

I think they should do 'ok' though it won't make you wealthy: - They collect money from businesses (who pay quite well) - They collect money from private repos (like I have for lots of my config files, no, no passwords/keys in there ;) for e.g. tex files. - The large companies probably pay some form of 'support'

discreditable 11y ago

> What if a massive open-source organization (e.g. Fedora, Apache) decided to use it This one is pretty big. https://github.com/torvalds/linux https://github.com/torvalds/linux

dnlrn 11y ago
This is just a mirror and not the repo the devs actually work on, so I don't think it's very taxing on the resources.
snowwrestler 11y ago
Sure but it's just the kernel, and that's just a mirror. Linus does not use Github to manage kernel development. In fact he's been vitriolic in the past about how Github does pull requests. I wonder how much traffic the Github Linux repo gets. Seems to me that people who want to use Linux, will go get a distro instead. And people who want to develop the kernel, will follow the kernel development process (which doesn't rely on Github).
- discreditable 11y ago
  For a period of time when Kernel.org was breached, GitHub was the repository for Linux. [1] I remember reading a review of GitHub by him shortly after. He did not like how Pull Requests or patches worked on GitHub. I'd link it but I'm having trouble finding it. 1. http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/09/06/linus_torvalds_dumps_kernel_for_github/ http://www.theregister.co.uk/2011/09/06/linus_torvalds_dumps...

kodablah 11y ago

> What if a massive open-source organization (e.g. Fedora, Apache) https://github.com/apache https://github.com/apache - Lots of mirrors but many projects use it as their main source.