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I don't disagree with you at all. The competition between GitHub, GitLab, and BitBucket spurs creativity and is a good thing. However, let's not fool ourselves

I don't disagree with you at all. The competition between GitHub, GitLab, and BitBucket spurs creativity and is a good thing. However, let's not fool ourselves: services like Codeplex, Google Code, or Sourceforge, that are not updated or providing new value, are going to be left behind and abandoned. In other words, their continued service wasn't providing any value, to their users or "competitors", because they weren't evolving. I would rather people put their open source project on a code hosting service that is someone's priority, not just one that exists and is useless.

edgyswingset 10y ago
This is key, I think. Codeplex feels like abandonware to me. All the important Microsoft projects have migrated to GitHub, where all the active development is happening. Perhaps this also screws over some people who wish to stay on Codeplex, but I can imagine it was just a cost to Microsoft. No use in having something which only costs you money lingering around.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]
jlarocco 10y ago
Agreed. CodePlex and to a lesser extent Google Code both felt less like competing products and more like MS and Google just wanted to have a code hosting presence to advertise that they "do" open source. Neither offered much that couldn't be provided with barebones cheap hosting and a Gitlab install, and my impression as an outsider was thatneither really improved over time. TBH, GitHub and BitBucket may not offer too much over GitLab any more either, but they are at least improving their products all the time and there's a sort of trendy network effect in using them that didn't exist for CodePlex or Google Code.
- andybak 10y ago
  I'd point out Google Code predated Github and for a while was the cool kid in town. They were late in supporting Git and slow to improve the feature set. Another lead Google threw away.
  - manigandham 10y ago
    Github is barely at $200M in revenue and requires a lot of moving pieces to make that happen - something that just doesnt make sense for the scale of Google. It's not really a great business opportunity. However, Google Cloud Platform does have private repositories that can also be used in their CI/CD solution. https://cloud.google.com/source-repositories/docs/ https://cloud.google.com/source-repositories/docs/
    - andybak 10y ago
      Fair point. Sometimes Google abandons something not because of institutional dysfuntionality - but simply because they are aiming much much bigger. Shame if you happen to live in the path of the juggernaut however...
    - sqeaky 10y ago
      That is a small revenue considering the impact they have on the world. I wonder how they might better monetize without becoming obnoxious?
rorosaurus 10y ago
To expand on your point, this CodePlex post mentions there were 350 projects with commits in the last 30 days. I'd venture to guess that number was much larger for GitHub. The people have voted on which service provides the most value.
- 0x6c6f6c 10y ago
  Might actually look into doing a quick script and checking this out.. It'd be interesting to look at. Plus I may only be able to scrape public projects, where private repositories may account for some large amount of the real number since those are typically paid for (except for Student accounts, afaik).
  - gjtorikian 10y ago
    No need to script! You can use Google's BigQuery with GitHub's data. Some documentation is here: https://www.githubarchive.org/ https://www.githubarchive.org/ A `PushEvent` is fired for every open source repository that has `master` updated: ``` SELECT COUNT(*) FROM ( TABLE_DATE_RANGE([githubarchive:day.], TIMESTAMP('2017-03-01'), TIMESTAMP('2017-03-31') )) WHERE type = 'PushEvent' ``` It's over 19 million!
    - zokier 10y ago
      Don't you need something like GROUP BY repo.id in there too?
      - xfalcox 10y ago
        Yes. By running: SELECT COUNT(DISTINCT repo.id) FROM [githubarchive:month.201701] WHERE type = 'PushEvent' I got 1896676, so almost 2M distinct repos with commits in last January.
        lucaspiller 10y ago
        Just a heads up that 'last January' would generally refer to January of the previous year, not the current year. http://english.stackexchange.com/a/43000 http://english.stackexchange.com/a/43000
rwmj 10y ago
I quite liked the simplicity of Google Code.
user5994461 10y ago
Google code was perfectly fine. Quick, simple, easy to use and reusing your google account. Also, it supported many code source systems, not just git. GitHub only added SVN support recently.
- simonw 10y ago
  Only if by "recently" you mean "seven years ago today" https://github.com/blog/626-announcing-svn-support https://github.com/blog/626-announcing-svn-support

edgyswingset 10y ago

This is key, I think. Codeplex feels like abandonware to me. All the important Microsoft projects have migrated to GitHub, where all the active development is happening. Perhaps this also screws over some people who wish to stay on Codeplex, but I can imagine it was just a cost to Microsoft. No use in having something which only costs you money lingering around.

deleted 10y ago
[deleted]

jlarocco 10y ago

Agreed. CodePlex and to a lesser extent Google Code both felt less like competing products and more like MS and Google just wanted to have a code hosting presence to advertise that they "do" open source. Neither offered much that couldn't be provided with barebones cheap hosting and a Gitlab install, and my impression as an outsider was thatneither really improved over time. TBH, GitHub and BitBucket may not offer too much over GitLab any more either, but they are at least improving their products all the time and there's a sort of trendy network effect in using them that didn't exist for CodePlex or Google Code.

andybak 10y ago
I'd point out Google Code predated Github and for a while was the cool kid in town. They were late in supporting Git and slow to improve the feature set. Another lead Google threw away.
- manigandham 10y ago
  Github is barely at $200M in revenue and requires a lot of moving pieces to make that happen - something that just doesnt make sense for the scale of Google. It's not really a great business opportunity. However, Google Cloud Platform does have private repositories that can also be used in their CI/CD solution. https://cloud.google.com/source-repositories/docs/ https://cloud.google.com/source-repositories/docs/
  - andybak 10y ago
    Fair point. Sometimes Google abandons something not because of institutional dysfuntionality - but simply because they are aiming much much bigger. Shame if you happen to live in the path of the juggernaut however...
  - sqeaky 10y ago
    That is a small revenue considering the impact they have on the world. I wonder how they might better monetize without becoming obnoxious?

rorosaurus 10y ago

To expand on your point, this CodePlex post mentions there were 350 projects with commits in the last 30 days. I'd venture to guess that number was much larger for GitHub. The people have voted on which service provides the most value.

0x6c6f6c 10y ago
Might actually look into doing a quick script and checking this out.. It'd be interesting to look at. Plus I may only be able to scrape public projects, where private repositories may account for some large amount of the real number since those are typically paid for (except for Student accounts, afaik).
- gjtorikian 10y ago
  No need to script! You can use Google's BigQuery with GitHub's data. Some documentation is here: https://www.githubarchive.org/ https://www.githubarchive.org/ A `PushEvent` is fired for every open source repository that has `master` updated: ``` SELECT COUNT(*) FROM ( TABLE_DATE_RANGE([githubarchive:day.], TIMESTAMP('2017-03-01'), TIMESTAMP('2017-03-31') )) WHERE type = 'PushEvent' ``` It's over 19 million!
  - zokier 10y ago
    Don't you need something like GROUP BY repo.id in there too?
    - xfalcox 10y ago
      Yes. By running: SELECT COUNT(DISTINCT repo.id) FROM [githubarchive:month.201701] WHERE type = 'PushEvent' I got 1896676, so almost 2M distinct repos with commits in last January.
      - lucaspiller 10y ago
        Just a heads up that 'last January' would generally refer to January of the previous year, not the current year. http://english.stackexchange.com/a/43000 http://english.stackexchange.com/a/43000

rwmj 10y ago

I quite liked the simplicity of Google Code.

user5994461 10y ago

Google code was perfectly fine. Quick, simple, easy to use and reusing your google account. Also, it supported many code source systems, not just git. GitHub only added SVN support recently.

simonw 10y ago
Only if by "recently" you mean "seven years ago today" https://github.com/blog/626-announcing-svn-support https://github.com/blog/626-announcing-svn-support