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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 cre

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/
      - zimpenfish 10y ago
        > they are the de-facto favored image host for Reddit Not any more - https://techcrunch.com/2016/05/25/reddit-image-uploads/ https://techcrunch.com/2016/05/25/reddit-image-uploads/
        StRoy 10y ago
        > Not any more Actually that is still the case. He said "de facto" not "official". Imgur still represents the majority of image links on most subreddits. https://www.reddit.com/domain/i.imgur.com/ https://www.reddit.com/domain/i.imgur.com/ r/all shows more imgur links than i.reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/all/ https://www.reddit.com/r/all/ Your article dates from half a year ago and they still couldn't snuff imgur out with built-in upload facilities, suffice to say, as far as the users are concerned, imgur is the defacto beloved service. People on twitter are more likely to use twitter's img upload than redditors are to use their own.
- anonbanker 10y ago
  slowly being replaced with sli.mg, the way that reddit is slowly being replaced with voat.co.
  - duiker101 10y ago
    So it's not?
  - sumedh 10y ago
    I have been hearing that about voat.co for couple of years.
    - anonbanker 10y ago
      took reddit a while to replace digg as well. a few years, in fact.
      - sumedh 10y ago
        People moved from digg to reddit in mass becase digg screwed up big time, as long as Reddit does not make any big screw ups, its pretty safe.
        anonbanker 10y ago
        seems the spez /r/the_donald controversy has tripled voat's user base.
flukus 10y ago
But github has a monetization strategy, they're a paid service. This is more about their headcount expanding and possibly losing paying customers because they decided to get political.
- wapz 10y ago
  I didn't follow when github started getting political. What happened?
  - quadrangle 10y ago
    They made a code-of-conduct. It pandered too strongly to the list-every-under-privileged-class attitude including explicitly rejecting the concept of "reverse discrimination" and so the reactionary folks who want to insist they aren't sexist and hate any moralizing or politics that challenge them etc. got up in arms. It was all a stupid side-show and had nothing to do with anything that matters to GitHub's basic services or business model. Most people never noticed either way.
    - jolux 10y ago
      The very suggestion that GitHub getting "political" supported by a single issue thread caused them to lose $66 million dollars is so laughable as to barely warrant confrontation.
      - thewhitetulip 10y ago
        Yes, I read the thread thrice still didn't understand how that makes github political, especially when the company makes $ on enterprise customers. Is the opal project managed by Github?
        flukus 10y ago
        They hired the professional victim to prosecute anyone that dares to disagree with SJW rightthink. A contributor was forced to leave the project. All over issues that had nothing to do with the project. That's an issue.
fergie 10y ago
SourceForge and GitHub feel different. SourceForge was always _really_ spammy from day one, GitHub has a far superior product. It seems logical that GitHub will eventually figure out how to make money, even if it is just by following the tried and trusted "project management system" model
- zigzigzag 10y ago
  SourceForge wasn't spammy from day one. I remember it back in the first year or so of its existence. It was actually really good, and an absolute revolution for the open source community as no such sites had existed prior to that. It immediately gained massive traction and was every bit as central to the open source/free software community as github is today.
  - qbaqbaqba 10y ago
    SourceForge has a new owner trying hard to bring it back to life.
    - h1d 10y ago
      > trying hard to bring it back Any source or info on this?
  - fergie 10y ago
    I used it from 2000ish until around the time that apt-get became good. I can't ever remember a time when sourceforge didnt make me try to click on ads when attempting to download software. It was certainly a valuable tool and definitely the GitHub of its time, but man- soooo spammy.
joncalhoun 10y ago
> Developers have, as far as I can tell, almost zero brand loyalty I feel like part of this stems from the fact that every service now wants to charge a monthly fee instead of offering a one time purchase. If you want me to pay $X/mo, that fee has to correlate to the value you are providing me each month. The minute that equation changes, people start to consider other options. One of the benefits to SaaS is that you can make more money and your revenue is more predictable, but on the other hand it means your market is more susceptible to competition because companies are comparing their options more frequently.

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/
    - zimpenfish 10y ago
      > they are the de-facto favored image host for Reddit Not any more - https://techcrunch.com/2016/05/25/reddit-image-uploads/ https://techcrunch.com/2016/05/25/reddit-image-uploads/
      - StRoy 10y ago
        > Not any more Actually that is still the case. He said "de facto" not "official". Imgur still represents the majority of image links on most subreddits. https://www.reddit.com/domain/i.imgur.com/ https://www.reddit.com/domain/i.imgur.com/ r/all shows more imgur links than i.reddit: https://www.reddit.com/r/all/ https://www.reddit.com/r/all/ Your article dates from half a year ago and they still couldn't snuff imgur out with built-in upload facilities, suffice to say, as far as the users are concerned, imgur is the defacto beloved service. People on twitter are more likely to use twitter's img upload than redditors are to use their own.
anonbanker 10y ago
slowly being replaced with sli.mg, the way that reddit is slowly being replaced with voat.co.
- duiker101 10y ago
  So it's not?
- sumedh 10y ago
  I have been hearing that about voat.co for couple of years.
  - anonbanker 10y ago
    took reddit a while to replace digg as well. a few years, in fact.
    - sumedh 10y ago
      People moved from digg to reddit in mass becase digg screwed up big time, as long as Reddit does not make any big screw ups, its pretty safe.
      - anonbanker 10y ago
        seems the spez /r/the_donald controversy has tripled voat's user base.

flukus 10y ago

But github has a monetization strategy, they're a paid service. This is more about their headcount expanding and possibly losing paying customers because they decided to get political.

wapz 10y ago
I didn't follow when github started getting political. What happened?
- quadrangle 10y ago
  They made a code-of-conduct. It pandered too strongly to the list-every-under-privileged-class attitude including explicitly rejecting the concept of "reverse discrimination" and so the reactionary folks who want to insist they aren't sexist and hate any moralizing or politics that challenge them etc. got up in arms. It was all a stupid side-show and had nothing to do with anything that matters to GitHub's basic services or business model. Most people never noticed either way.
  - jolux 10y ago
    The very suggestion that GitHub getting "political" supported by a single issue thread caused them to lose $66 million dollars is so laughable as to barely warrant confrontation.
    - thewhitetulip 10y ago
      Yes, I read the thread thrice still didn't understand how that makes github political, especially when the company makes $ on enterprise customers. Is the opal project managed by Github?
      - flukus 10y ago
        They hired the professional victim to prosecute anyone that dares to disagree with SJW rightthink. A contributor was forced to leave the project. All over issues that had nothing to do with the project. That's an issue.

fergie 10y ago

SourceForge and GitHub feel different. SourceForge was always _really_ spammy from day one, GitHub has a far superior product. It seems logical that GitHub will eventually figure out how to make money, even if it is just by following the tried and trusted "project management system" model

zigzigzag 10y ago
SourceForge wasn't spammy from day one. I remember it back in the first year or so of its existence. It was actually really good, and an absolute revolution for the open source community as no such sites had existed prior to that. It immediately gained massive traction and was every bit as central to the open source/free software community as github is today.
- qbaqbaqba 10y ago
  SourceForge has a new owner trying hard to bring it back to life.
  - h1d 10y ago
    > trying hard to bring it back Any source or info on this?
- fergie 10y ago
  I used it from 2000ish until around the time that apt-get became good. I can't ever remember a time when sourceforge didnt make me try to click on ads when attempting to download software. It was certainly a valuable tool and definitely the GitHub of its time, but man- soooo spammy.

joncalhoun 10y ago

> Developers have, as far as I can tell, almost zero brand loyalty I feel like part of this stems from the fact that every service now wants to charge a monthly fee instead of offering a one time purchase. If you want me to pay $X/mo, that fee has to correlate to the value you are providing me each month. The minute that equation changes, people start to consider other options. One of the benefits to SaaS is that you can make more money and your revenue is more predictable, but on the other hand it means your market is more susceptible to competition because companies are comparing their options more frequently.