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The thought of losing Github to the startup graveyard is kind of scary. It was bad enough to lose Google Code and when SourceForge had their "great purge" of in

The thought of losing Github to the startup graveyard is kind of scary. It was bad enough to lose Google Code and when SourceForge had their "great purge" of inactive projects.

minimaxir 10y ago
Fortunately, GitHub Archive exists in the event things go south. https://www.githubarchive.org https://www.githubarchive.org
- searchfaster 10y ago
  I was just trying to collect all issues raised on github, unfortunately anything before 2015 (the now deprecated timeline API) is not very useful.
lalos 10y ago
That's what happens with centralized systems it is inevitable, from the Roman Empire to Google Code nothing is permanent.
- kobeya 10y ago
  The laws of physics are.
  - lalos 10y ago
    The laws of physics are not centralized as governments, currency or google code / github, that aside they can and most probably are incomplete or expressed in a way that only applies to certain constraints (size, time, theory of relativity comes to mind)
    - ZenoArrow 10y ago
      The laws of physics aren't really laws at all, but rather the best guesses humans have for describing physical processes. There are also more than one set of laws, and they're not all compatible with each other, which is why efforts are being made to provide a unified set of laws. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theory_of_everything https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theory_of_everything
  - thesagan 10y ago
    I think those are what determines permanency. But let's not be pedantic.
  - knownothing 10y ago
    Right. That's why we never find out we were wrong about anything in science.
    - thebspatrol 10y ago
      The laws of physics aren't interchangeable with our understanding of them
      - palunon 10y ago
        And in that case, maybe our understanding that there are laws of physics and that they don't change is false.
      - knownothing 10y ago
        That's a philosophically naive view of how science works.
        thebspatrol 10y ago
        Claiming that our understanding of science 500 years ago is at all equitable to the way science works in 2016 is even more naive.
        knownothing 10y ago
        That's the opposite of what I'm claiming so maybe you should work on your reading rather than science. Our understanding changed over 500 years. And in another 500 years some moron will be saying the same thing you are, that we've always had perfect and final knowledge of science, and it will be just as stupid then.
  - s_kilk 10y ago
    Mindless pedantry.
  - betenoire 10y ago
    the laws of physics change each time our understanding does
ZenoArrow 10y ago
On the other hand, as Git is a DVCS even if GitHub went down the repos still live on local developer machines, so it'd be easy enough to move to a different Git hosting provider.
- zitterbewegung 10y ago
  The features that github has would be pretty hard to migrate even to something that has almost 1:1 feature parity like GitLab. I don't know of an export tool they have for all the data associated with github.
  - palunon 10y ago
    They have an import tool : https://docs.gitlab.com/ce/workflow/importing/import_projects_from_github.html https://docs.gitlab.com/ce/workflow/importing/import_project...
- dom0 10y ago
  Yeah, but you lose a lot. Issues, Wikis, Github Pages, CI, Reviews, Projects etc.
- carbocation 10y ago
  I moved a bunch of repos to bitbucket, since they support free private repositories (which I need for a small organization that I'm part of). It was, as your comment alludes, extremely quick and easy thanks to the "D" in DVCS. That said, we don't use issues, the wiki, etc.
- AceJohnny2 10y ago
  People keep bringing that up, but that's missing the bigger picture: GitHub is more than just a git host, it's also a "social hub" where people can fork repos and offer changes back (pull requests), a passable bugtracker (issues), even wiki, and even web host (github.io). Many people have warned that using these added-value features makes you dependent on GitHub (Linus Torvalds has a kernel mirror on GitHub, but for this reason refuses to use its other features). Migrating all that metadata is hard (is it even possible?).
deleted 10y ago
[deleted]
Netcob 10y ago
...aaand no more OSS! Only half-kidding. So many big and small projects are using GitHub as their primary repository and sometimes their only homepage. And there's all those benefits of it being something of a social network as well, and an issue tracker and so on. I'm sure something else would take its place, but it would take a while before it gets as much momentum.
- moritzplassnig 10y ago
  I wonder how much of a social network it really is. What's the value you get out of other people having their OSS projects on GitHub? Yes, it's all on one site/domain but if Google Search is your entry point, does it matter if the OSS code lives on Bitbucket, GitHub or GitLab? 4 years ago I thought that my GitHub account will get more important, the identity will matter but is that really the case? I don't see the typical network effects and behavior of a social network. I think all there's is the perception of GitHub being the default choice. That's powerful but far less powerful than truly increased value for me as an user because of the size of the network, you being an user too (eg. Twitter or Uber).
Analemma_ 10y ago
If they can't stand on their own feet, I imagine somebody would/will buy GitHub at a firesale rather than see it disappear completely. For all their missteps, they have developer mindshare that is the envy of everyone. If we're lucky it would be someone like Google or Microsoft, if we're unlucky it might be Oracle or SalesForce. Whoever it would end up being though, GitHub won't just vanish.
- ocschwar 10y ago
  I appreciate how GitHub's software platform makes migration elsewhere much easier, making me less leveraged by GitHub the company. That, ironically, makes me REALLY not want them to go under: they don't deserve to.
  - rajathagasthya 10y ago
    Isn't the migration easier because it's just a git repo? I'm curious how GitHub's software platform specifically facilitates easy migration.
    - connorshea 10y ago
      The comprehensive API helps, though that can theoretically be limited if a ton of people try to migrate.
    - palunon 10y ago
      The git repo itself is trivial to migrate (you already have a full copy, just push it somewhere else). The problems are issues, code comments, pull request discussions, etc, which may be harder, and their API helps here.
      - mixedCase 10y ago
        Truth be told, an API is an easy way to get app developers to include support for your platform; you aren't going to save yourself from the reality of web scrapers in any case.
Fiahil 10y ago
We'll just move the code to gitlab. Git allow us to do it almost painlessly (well, with a missing issue backlog). It's not a big deal.
- cperciva 10y ago
  99% of the value of github is the user interface, not the mere fact that it's a hosted git repository.
  - Fiahil 10y ago
    I believe gitlab's UI has gotten better lastly. Nevertheless, if 99% of the value provided by github comes from their interface, should we remember how much time they needed to implement the "+1" counters on messages?
    - munchor 10y ago
      Their UI/UX is still nowhere comparable to GitHub's. GitHub is so much simpler to use that GitLab and everyone I talk to seems to have the same opinion. GitLab is still lagging far behind when it comes to user experience, it's just not easy to find stuff.
      - 0x0 10y ago
        Well, I find both Bitbucket and Gitlab to be superior to GitHub in the UI department. I haven't even been able to find a graphical tree log of branches and commits on GitHub. ("network" on Gitlab, "commits" on Bitbucket). They also both offer unlimited private repositories (albeit bitbucket has a limit on the number of users granted access, but very cheap pricing if you need to bump the user limit.). GitHub only recently introduced unlimited private repositories on their pricing plans. For years GitHub priced themselves out of our reach (with 300+ private repositories, they didn't even offer this as an option beyond "call us")
        tcpekin 10y ago
duskwuff 10y ago
> It was bad enough [...] when SourceForge had their "great purge" of inactive projects. What purge? I'm personally aware of some projects which are still on SourceForge which haven't been touched in >10 years. If there was a purge, it must have been limited to projects with no activity whatsoever.
- gamache 10y ago
  http://www.infoworld.com/article/2929732/open-source-software/sourceforge-commits-reputational-suicide.html http://www.infoworld.com/article/2929732/open-source-softwar...
  - duskwuff 10y ago
    I'm even more confused now. While the project monetization situation was certainly bad, it didn't result in the removal of any content that I'm aware of.
unethical_ban 10y ago
Maybe, just maybe, someday we'll have a decentralized web with a web-of-trust identity framework, and people can host their own email, code repository, and even website! P.S. to put a bit more effort into my post: I really do wonder if the discoverability problem of a decentralized web can be better solved for things like social networks, code sharing, etc.
- dispose13432 10y ago
  You can host your own "GitHub". It's called "GitLab". For my use, it's just as good. The only downside is that for a toy project, you have to spend money and resources on it.
- rogual 10y ago
  Startup idea for someone: A search engine that only indexes decentralized, self-hosted stuff. No Github, FB, etc. Hell, go ahead and delist all sites using Google Analytics.
inthewoods 10y ago
Or is it - to me Github is just another example of the developer tools market cycle. Reminds me a bit of the image hosting market - image hosting company is created and gains momentum, then has to monetize, so they add advertising and people start to drift away when someone else then creates the next image hosting site. In the developer space, it seems pretty much the same. SourceForge was good/cool until it wasn't, so people moved to Github. Now, as Github perhaps gradually loses steam or coolness (might not happen either), another company will emerge (maybe it's Gitlab) who will take share while Github perhaps spins into irrelevance. Wash, rinse, repeat - but each time the software tends to get cheaper and cheaper, creating a massive deflationary environment as the particular developer tool set becomes commodity. Or maybe AWS or Google step in with an actual good product (hasn't happened yet as far as I can tell in CI/CD but hey you never know), and they charge nothing for it because it's part of a basket of services. Margin for the standalone company goes to zero. Developers have, as far as I can tell, almost zero brand loyalty - and that probably makes sense - but it's very tough in my opinion to create great products for developers and make money as a company at the same time.
- sumedh 10y ago
  > when someone else then creates the next image hosting site. If I am not mistaken Imgur is doing quite well for many years now.
  - camus2 10y ago
    How is Imgur making money ?
    - sumedh 10y ago
      Ads, they are making good money from the ads that they removed paid plans and gave all the features to everyone.
      - nerdponx 10y ago
        Keep in mind that also have a superior product to just about every image host that came before them (other than Flickr), they are the de-facto favored image host for Reddit, and to top it off have their own social networking features with non-trivial market adoption. With that many eyeballs on your site it's no surprise that even their subtle advertising style [1] is profitable. I'd personally much rather see sponsored posts everywhere than pandering direct marketing and spying/tracking. [1]: http://www.imgurads.com/ http://www.imgurads.com/
moritzplassnig 10y ago
GitHub is a $100M ARR revenue company that is probably (2 VC rounds where they had a lot of leverage) still controlled by the founders. They are in a healthy state right now, regardless of the high burn compared to most VC-backed companies. They certainly made a lot of mistakes, had changes in the leadership team and are successful despite that not because of it, but I don't see them dying anytime soon. $60M burn over 9 months after raising $250M isn't horrible either. If they continue to grow which seems to be the case, they will be break-even long before they run out of money. The numbers aren't surprising to me; I'm more surprised why Bloomberg makes such a big deal out of it. GitHub's bigger problem is certainly that they stopped improving, had internal team issues, etc. but that's only a small part of the article (vs. a big focus on those numbers).
- justinclift 10y ago
  > I'm more surprised why Bloomberg makes such a big deal out of it. They're probably sounding alarmist to try maximising attention. :/
  - moritzplassnig 10y ago
    Could be or they probably don't know the details of GitHub's business, product, etc. If you aren't an engineer, writing for Bloomberg and getting the financials of a hyped startup like GitHub, that article is the outcome in most of the cases. Imagine them writing about Docker - I doubt it would be different. Which is a bummer. I wish there would be somebody more closely analyzing the industry. There's so much going on and I believe that surfacing more of that to the broader community would be beneficial for all of us and result in stronger companies. I think nobody wants to see GitHub going out of Business. We need health competition (as consumers of their products). That GitLab forced pressure on them to improve the product is awesome. I wish Bloomberg would have put more focus on the cultural/leadership issues because a more diverse/inclusive GitHub, again, is better for all of us.
    - monkmartinez 10y ago
      > If you aren't an engineer, writing for Bloomberg and getting the financials of a hyped startup like GitHub, that article is the outcome in most of the cases. Imagine them writing about Docker - I doubt it would be different. And it shouldn't be different. If the financials are not well, then the financials are not well. Docker, like github, DOES NOT have their future "locked up" 100%. There are a lot of reasons why both could ultimately fail and burning piles of cash seems pretty darn relevant despite the echo chamber that is Silicon Valley.

The thought of losing Github to the startup graveyard is kind of scary. It was bad enough to lose Google Code and when SourceForge had their "great purge" of inactive projects.

minimaxir 10y ago

Fortunately, GitHub Archive exists in the event things go south. https://www.githubarchive.org https://www.githubarchive.org

searchfaster 10y ago
I was just trying to collect all issues raised on github, unfortunately anything before 2015 (the now deprecated timeline API) is not very useful.

lalos 10y ago

That's what happens with centralized systems it is inevitable, from the Roman Empire to Google Code nothing is permanent.

kobeya 10y ago
The laws of physics are.
- lalos 10y ago
  The laws of physics are not centralized as governments, currency or google code / github, that aside they can and most probably are incomplete or expressed in a way that only applies to certain constraints (size, time, theory of relativity comes to mind)
  - ZenoArrow 10y ago
    The laws of physics aren't really laws at all, but rather the best guesses humans have for describing physical processes. There are also more than one set of laws, and they're not all compatible with each other, which is why efforts are being made to provide a unified set of laws. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theory_of_everything https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theory_of_everything
- thesagan 10y ago
  I think those are what determines permanency. But let's not be pedantic.
- knownothing 10y ago
  Right. That's why we never find out we were wrong about anything in science.
  - thebspatrol 10y ago
    The laws of physics aren't interchangeable with our understanding of them
    - palunon 10y ago
      And in that case, maybe our understanding that there are laws of physics and that they don't change is false.
    - knownothing 10y ago
      That's a philosophically naive view of how science works.
      - thebspatrol 10y ago
        Claiming that our understanding of science 500 years ago is at all equitable to the way science works in 2016 is even more naive.
        knownothing 10y ago
        That's the opposite of what I'm claiming so maybe you should work on your reading rather than science. Our understanding changed over 500 years. And in another 500 years some moron will be saying the same thing you are, that we've always had perfect and final knowledge of science, and it will be just as stupid then.
- s_kilk 10y ago
  Mindless pedantry.
- betenoire 10y ago
  the laws of physics change each time our understanding does

ZenoArrow 10y ago

On the other hand, as Git is a DVCS even if GitHub went down the repos still live on local developer machines, so it'd be easy enough to move to a different Git hosting provider.

zitterbewegung 10y ago
The features that github has would be pretty hard to migrate even to something that has almost 1:1 feature parity like GitLab. I don't know of an export tool they have for all the data associated with github.
- palunon 10y ago
  They have an import tool : https://docs.gitlab.com/ce/workflow/importing/import_projects_from_github.html https://docs.gitlab.com/ce/workflow/importing/import_project...
dom0 10y ago
Yeah, but you lose a lot. Issues, Wikis, Github Pages, CI, Reviews, Projects etc.
carbocation 10y ago
I moved a bunch of repos to bitbucket, since they support free private repositories (which I need for a small organization that I'm part of). It was, as your comment alludes, extremely quick and easy thanks to the "D" in DVCS. That said, we don't use issues, the wiki, etc.
AceJohnny2 10y ago
People keep bringing that up, but that's missing the bigger picture: GitHub is more than just a git host, it's also a "social hub" where people can fork repos and offer changes back (pull requests), a passable bugtracker (issues), even wiki, and even web host (github.io). Many people have warned that using these added-value features makes you dependent on GitHub (Linus Torvalds has a kernel mirror on GitHub, but for this reason refuses to use its other features). Migrating all that metadata is hard (is it even possible?).

deleted 10y ago

[deleted]

Netcob 10y ago

...aaand no more OSS! Only half-kidding. So many big and small projects are using GitHub as their primary repository and sometimes their only homepage. And there's all those benefits of it being something of a social network as well, and an issue tracker and so on. I'm sure something else would take its place, but it would take a while before it gets as much momentum.

moritzplassnig 10y ago
I wonder how much of a social network it really is. What's the value you get out of other people having their OSS projects on GitHub? Yes, it's all on one site/domain but if Google Search is your entry point, does it matter if the OSS code lives on Bitbucket, GitHub or GitLab? 4 years ago I thought that my GitHub account will get more important, the identity will matter but is that really the case? I don't see the typical network effects and behavior of a social network. I think all there's is the perception of GitHub being the default choice. That's powerful but far less powerful than truly increased value for me as an user because of the size of the network, you being an user too (eg. Twitter or Uber).

Analemma_ 10y ago

If they can't stand on their own feet, I imagine somebody would/will buy GitHub at a firesale rather than see it disappear completely. For all their missteps, they have developer mindshare that is the envy of everyone. If we're lucky it would be someone like Google or Microsoft, if we're unlucky it might be Oracle or SalesForce. Whoever it would end up being though, GitHub won't just vanish.

ocschwar 10y ago
I appreciate how GitHub's software platform makes migration elsewhere much easier, making me less leveraged by GitHub the company. That, ironically, makes me REALLY not want them to go under: they don't deserve to.
- rajathagasthya 10y ago
  Isn't the migration easier because it's just a git repo? I'm curious how GitHub's software platform specifically facilitates easy migration.
  - connorshea 10y ago
    The comprehensive API helps, though that can theoretically be limited if a ton of people try to migrate.
  - palunon 10y ago
    The git repo itself is trivial to migrate (you already have a full copy, just push it somewhere else). The problems are issues, code comments, pull request discussions, etc, which may be harder, and their API helps here.
    - mixedCase 10y ago
      Truth be told, an API is an easy way to get app developers to include support for your platform; you aren't going to save yourself from the reality of web scrapers in any case.

Fiahil 10y ago

We'll just move the code to gitlab. Git allow us to do it almost painlessly (well, with a missing issue backlog). It's not a big deal.

cperciva 10y ago
99% of the value of github is the user interface, not the mere fact that it's a hosted git repository.
- Fiahil 10y ago
  I believe gitlab's UI has gotten better lastly. Nevertheless, if 99% of the value provided by github comes from their interface, should we remember how much time they needed to implement the "+1" counters on messages?
  - munchor 10y ago
    Their UI/UX is still nowhere comparable to GitHub's. GitHub is so much simpler to use that GitLab and everyone I talk to seems to have the same opinion. GitLab is still lagging far behind when it comes to user experience, it's just not easy to find stuff.
    - 0x0 10y ago
      Well, I find both Bitbucket and Gitlab to be superior to GitHub in the UI department. I haven't even been able to find a graphical tree log of branches and commits on GitHub. ("network" on Gitlab, "commits" on Bitbucket). They also both offer unlimited private repositories (albeit bitbucket has a limit on the number of users granted access, but very cheap pricing if you need to bump the user limit.). GitHub only recently introduced unlimited private repositories on their pricing plans. For years GitHub priced themselves out of our reach (with 300+ private repositories, they didn't even offer this as an option beyond "call us")
      - tcpekin 10y ago

duskwuff 10y ago

> It was bad enough [...] when SourceForge had their "great purge" of inactive projects. What purge? I'm personally aware of some projects which are still on SourceForge which haven't been touched in >10 years. If there was a purge, it must have been limited to projects with no activity whatsoever.

gamache 10y ago
http://www.infoworld.com/article/2929732/open-source-software/sourceforge-commits-reputational-suicide.html http://www.infoworld.com/article/2929732/open-source-softwar...
- duskwuff 10y ago
  I'm even more confused now. While the project monetization situation was certainly bad, it didn't result in the removal of any content that I'm aware of.

unethical_ban 10y ago

Maybe, just maybe, someday we'll have a decentralized web with a web-of-trust identity framework, and people can host their own email, code repository, and even website! P.S. to put a bit more effort into my post: I really do wonder if the discoverability problem of a decentralized web can be better solved for things like social networks, code sharing, etc.

dispose13432 10y ago
You can host your own "GitHub". It's called "GitLab". For my use, it's just as good. The only downside is that for a toy project, you have to spend money and resources on it.
rogual 10y ago
Startup idea for someone: A search engine that only indexes decentralized, self-hosted stuff. No Github, FB, etc. Hell, go ahead and delist all sites using Google Analytics.

inthewoods 10y ago

Or is it - to me Github is just another example of the developer tools market cycle. Reminds me a bit of the image hosting market - image hosting company is created and gains momentum, then has to monetize, so they add advertising and people start to drift away when someone else then creates the next image hosting site. In the developer space, it seems pretty much the same. SourceForge was good/cool until it wasn't, so people moved to Github. Now, as Github perhaps gradually loses steam or coolness (might not happen either), another company will emerge (maybe it's Gitlab) who will take share while Github perhaps spins into irrelevance. Wash, rinse, repeat - but each time the software tends to get cheaper and cheaper, creating a massive deflationary environment as the particular developer tool set becomes commodity. Or maybe AWS or Google step in with an actual good product (hasn't happened yet as far as I can tell in CI/CD but hey you never know), and they charge nothing for it because it's part of a basket of services. Margin for the standalone company goes to zero. Developers have, as far as I can tell, almost zero brand loyalty - and that probably makes sense - but it's very tough in my opinion to create great products for developers and make money as a company at the same time.

sumedh 10y ago
> when someone else then creates the next image hosting site. If I am not mistaken Imgur is doing quite well for many years now.
- camus2 10y ago
  How is Imgur making money ?
  - sumedh 10y ago
    Ads, they are making good money from the ads that they removed paid plans and gave all the features to everyone.
    - nerdponx 10y ago
      Keep in mind that also have a superior product to just about every image host that came before them (other than Flickr), they are the de-facto favored image host for Reddit, and to top it off have their own social networking features with non-trivial market adoption. With that many eyeballs on your site it's no surprise that even their subtle advertising style [1] is profitable. I'd personally much rather see sponsored posts everywhere than pandering direct marketing and spying/tracking. [1]: http://www.imgurads.com/ http://www.imgurads.com/

moritzplassnig 10y ago

GitHub is a $100M ARR revenue company that is probably (2 VC rounds where they had a lot of leverage) still controlled by the founders. They are in a healthy state right now, regardless of the high burn compared to most VC-backed companies. They certainly made a lot of mistakes, had changes in the leadership team and are successful despite that not because of it, but I don't see them dying anytime soon. $60M burn over 9 months after raising $250M isn't horrible either. If they continue to grow which seems to be the case, they will be break-even long before they run out of money. The numbers aren't surprising to me; I'm more surprised why Bloomberg makes such a big deal out of it. GitHub's bigger problem is certainly that they stopped improving, had internal team issues, etc. but that's only a small part of the article (vs. a big focus on those numbers).

justinclift 10y ago
> I'm more surprised why Bloomberg makes such a big deal out of it. They're probably sounding alarmist to try maximising attention. :/
- moritzplassnig 10y ago
  Could be or they probably don't know the details of GitHub's business, product, etc. If you aren't an engineer, writing for Bloomberg and getting the financials of a hyped startup like GitHub, that article is the outcome in most of the cases. Imagine them writing about Docker - I doubt it would be different. Which is a bummer. I wish there would be somebody more closely analyzing the industry. There's so much going on and I believe that surfacing more of that to the broader community would be beneficial for all of us and result in stronger companies. I think nobody wants to see GitHub going out of Business. We need health competition (as consumers of their products). That GitLab forced pressure on them to improve the product is awesome. I wish Bloomberg would have put more focus on the cultural/leadership issues because a more diverse/inclusive GitHub, again, is better for all of us.
  - monkmartinez 10y ago
    > If you aren't an engineer, writing for Bloomberg and getting the financials of a hyped startup like GitHub, that article is the outcome in most of the cases. Imagine them writing about Docker - I doubt it would be different. And it shouldn't be different. If the financials are not well, then the financials are not well. Docker, like github, DOES NOT have their future "locked up" 100%. There are a lot of reasons why both could ultimately fail and burning piles of cash seems pretty darn relevant despite the echo chamber that is Silicon Valley.