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> GitHub will retain its product philosophy. We love GitHub because of the deep care and thoughtfulness that goes into every facet of the developer’s experience

by ken 8y ago

> GitHub will retain its product philosophy. We love GitHub because of the deep care and thoughtfulness that goes into every facet of the developer’s experience. I understand and respect this, and know that we will continue to build tasteful, snappy, polished tools that developers love. > Ultimately, my job is to make GitHub better for you. Whenever I see a product claim it's "for you", I cringe. You just can't put something on the web or on TV and say "for you" and have it mean anything useful. What I always loved about GitHub was that it was the underdog, so they naturally built tools so that a couple of developers in a garage (well, cafe) could have access to the same type of tools that a Fortune-100 company has (and has to pay companies like IBM big bucks to install and maintain). It's using technology to help those with fewer resources, which is to me the entire purpose of technology. Almost everything I've seen from GitHub in the past year or two has been to help enterprise developers at big established companies. Creating giant workflows and integrating with legacy systems and such. The little things that individuals use are slipping through the cracks. When I reported that the milestone date-picker went away for Safari users, for example, they just told me "Sorry". "Developers" has become a dirty word. It's a weasel word that companies use to try to convince me they're talking about me, while actually talking about someone and something completely different. If you can't be more specific than that, you're almost certainly wasting my time. I miss the GitHub whose homepage had logos of little startups I'd barely heard of, and direct links to new and interesting repos. Now they've got IBM and SAP and Walmart logos. It's clear that the "developers" they're targeting no longer includes me.

toomuchtodo 8y ago
Have to go where the money is, and if we're at the end of the business cycle where VCs are making it rain, startups aren't where the money is at. Businesses run on cash, not hopes, dreams, and aspirations. Think about that the next time you're on the free tier of a service you love and can't live without.
- ken 8y ago
  I never asked anyone to run a business on "hopes, dreams, and aspirations". I'm a paying GitHub customer. They could have raised prices on me and I'd still pay. People used to say, "If you're not paying, you're the product", so I've been careful not to depend on any free-with-a-catch services. I guess now I have to be extra careful not to depend on any VC-funded services, either, because if I'm not as rich an income stream as the corporate world, I'm still not the real customer.
  - toomuchtodo 8y ago
    I commend you for paying. Seriously. People usually vote with their mouths, not their dollars. With that said, tech capitalism is hard! Even if you pay, as you mention, you might still end up being left in a lurch. I don't know what the solution is unless you build everything yourself, which is untenable, or ensure that providers you use are easy from when necessary.
    - ken 8y ago
      I started paying for GitHub because it offered a service I want, not to support "tech capitalism". I'm still not convinced that capitalism is the right model for software. The GitHub situation is exactly what I'd feared. When private fire departments fail to work well for citizens, we no longer just say "Well, fire department capitalism is hard!" It's the wrong model.
      - toomuchtodo 8y ago
        I don't disagree with your assertion, and am fully supportive of the non-profit utility model for Internet services (and donate to such existing causes accordingly).
    - honestoHeminway 8y ago
      The solution is open source, and the caravan approach- everything has to be migratable within seconds, the moment the heat comes around the corner. So that if your service dies on you, you basically can re-host losless on your own device within a few minutes.
bad_user 8y ago
> Almost everything I've seen from GitHub in the past year or two has been to help enterprise developers at big established companies. Companies eventually go after companies willing to spend money, otherwise they don’t survive because consumers and startups are cheap and don’t want to spend money on such productivity tools and services. That or they could’ve shoved ads down your throat, or bundle spyware in the archives people download. As they say, damned if you do, damned if you don’t. Next time when you like a service that brings you value, pay for it (using the royal you here).
- ken 8y ago
  I am a paying customer of GitHub. I'd gladly pay more than I do now, if it provided value to me. As it is, they're moving in a direction that's getting worse for me over time, so "get all my (paid) stuff off GitHub" is on my to-do list. If you're suggesting that every company that starts with consumer-oriented products must inevitably transition into enterprise-oriented products, I don't believe that to be true. I can think of many counterexamples.
- marmaduke 8y ago
  I don’t think this is true. I paid for a personal GitHub plan for years to have the private repos and to support them, back when it was a simpler place. If 100k devs around the world did the same, they’d have enough plenty of money to do what they were doing then. Instead they insisted on endless growth, hosting All The Projects without bound or limit and I’d say that’s what puts them in hot water, needing crazy amounts of money that individuals can’t provide.
  - Kalium 8y ago
    OK! Let's work some numbers on this. 100k devs times $7mo personal account times twelve months. 100 000 * 7 * 12 = 8 400 000 $8.4 million in gross revenue a year. Out of this has to come all operational costs, all salaries, all benefits for staff, all other overhead, and so on. At west coast tech rates, that's low-30s number of people. Assume lower, since AWS and similar isn't exactly free. Do you think GitHub could have done every single thing they did at the time you have in mind with a double handful of engineers and sysadmins and managers? I must admit, I'm a little skeptical. Staffing a solid ops organization capable of 24/7 coverage takes at least a dozen people. I haven't even touched on taxes. Business plans can easily be a thousand a month or more. GitHub has an offering of $21 per user per month, also for business. In either case this almost certainly offers significantly greater overhead that the individual plans do. You can get the same revenue numbers with significantly lower load with a third the number of users! Not to mention that you have fewer customers for the same amount of revenue, which makes support higher-touch but much easier in important ways. With this in mind, it's easy to see why a group like GitHub might want to consider investing in supporting businesses. There's so much more margin there. Especially when you consider that their predecessors did not, and GitHub out-competed them in part due to the extra revenue that comes from strong enterprise support. Services like GitHub don't get to sit still. Or else we'd all still be using SourceForge.
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]

by ken 8y ago

toomuchtodo 8y ago

Have to go where the money is, and if we're at the end of the business cycle where VCs are making it rain, startups aren't where the money is at. Businesses run on cash, not hopes, dreams, and aspirations. Think about that the next time you're on the free tier of a service you love and can't live without.

ken 8y ago
I never asked anyone to run a business on "hopes, dreams, and aspirations". I'm a paying GitHub customer. They could have raised prices on me and I'd still pay. People used to say, "If you're not paying, you're the product", so I've been careful not to depend on any free-with-a-catch services. I guess now I have to be extra careful not to depend on any VC-funded services, either, because if I'm not as rich an income stream as the corporate world, I'm still not the real customer.
- toomuchtodo 8y ago
  I commend you for paying. Seriously. People usually vote with their mouths, not their dollars. With that said, tech capitalism is hard! Even if you pay, as you mention, you might still end up being left in a lurch. I don't know what the solution is unless you build everything yourself, which is untenable, or ensure that providers you use are easy from when necessary.
  - ken 8y ago
    I started paying for GitHub because it offered a service I want, not to support "tech capitalism". I'm still not convinced that capitalism is the right model for software. The GitHub situation is exactly what I'd feared. When private fire departments fail to work well for citizens, we no longer just say "Well, fire department capitalism is hard!" It's the wrong model.
    - toomuchtodo 8y ago
      I don't disagree with your assertion, and am fully supportive of the non-profit utility model for Internet services (and donate to such existing causes accordingly).
  - honestoHeminway 8y ago
    The solution is open source, and the caravan approach- everything has to be migratable within seconds, the moment the heat comes around the corner. So that if your service dies on you, you basically can re-host losless on your own device within a few minutes.

bad_user 8y ago

> Almost everything I've seen from GitHub in the past year or two has been to help enterprise developers at big established companies. Companies eventually go after companies willing to spend money, otherwise they don’t survive because consumers and startups are cheap and don’t want to spend money on such productivity tools and services. That or they could’ve shoved ads down your throat, or bundle spyware in the archives people download. As they say, damned if you do, damned if you don’t. Next time when you like a service that brings you value, pay for it (using the royal you here).

ken 8y ago
I am a paying customer of GitHub. I'd gladly pay more than I do now, if it provided value to me. As it is, they're moving in a direction that's getting worse for me over time, so "get all my (paid) stuff off GitHub" is on my to-do list. If you're suggesting that every company that starts with consumer-oriented products must inevitably transition into enterprise-oriented products, I don't believe that to be true. I can think of many counterexamples.
marmaduke 8y ago
I don’t think this is true. I paid for a personal GitHub plan for years to have the private repos and to support them, back when it was a simpler place. If 100k devs around the world did the same, they’d have enough plenty of money to do what they were doing then. Instead they insisted on endless growth, hosting All The Projects without bound or limit and I’d say that’s what puts them in hot water, needing crazy amounts of money that individuals can’t provide.
- Kalium 8y ago
  OK! Let's work some numbers on this. 100k devs times $7mo personal account times twelve months. 100 000 * 7 * 12 = 8 400 000 $8.4 million in gross revenue a year. Out of this has to come all operational costs, all salaries, all benefits for staff, all other overhead, and so on. At west coast tech rates, that's low-30s number of people. Assume lower, since AWS and similar isn't exactly free. Do you think GitHub could have done every single thing they did at the time you have in mind with a double handful of engineers and sysadmins and managers? I must admit, I'm a little skeptical. Staffing a solid ops organization capable of 24/7 coverage takes at least a dozen people. I haven't even touched on taxes. Business plans can easily be a thousand a month or more. GitHub has an offering of $21 per user per month, also for business. In either case this almost certainly offers significantly greater overhead that the individual plans do. You can get the same revenue numbers with significantly lower load with a third the number of users! Not to mention that you have fewer customers for the same amount of revenue, which makes support higher-touch but much easier in important ways. With this in mind, it's easy to see why a group like GitHub might want to consider investing in supporting businesses. There's so much more margin there. Especially when you consider that their predecessors did not, and GitHub out-competed them in part due to the extra revenue that comes from strong enterprise support. Services like GitHub don't get to sit still. Or else we'd all still be using SourceForge.

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]