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Hi HN, I'm the CEO of GitHub. Everyone at GitHub is really excited about this announcement, and I'm happy to answer any questions. We've wanted to make this ch

Hi HN, I'm the CEO of GitHub. Everyone at GitHub is really excited about this announcement, and I'm happy to answer any questions. We've wanted to make this change for the last 18 months, but needed our Enterprise business to be big enough to enable the free use of GitHub by the rest of the world. I'm happy to say that it's grown dramatically in the last year, and so we're able to make GitHub free for teams that don't need Enterprise features. We also retained our Team pricing plan for people who need email support (and a couple of other features like code owners). In general we think that every developer on earth should be able to use GitHub for their work, and so it is great to remove price as a barrier.

tekknolagi 6y ago
Hi Nat. Big fan. I've been on GitHub for a long time now. There's a fair bit of friction in issue/PR management for people who have primarily CLI-centered workflows. I know that `hub` and friends exist, but will there be official, supported clients in the future? Also: are there plans to open source more of GitHub? Post Microsoft acquisition, I have been increasingly concerned about vendor lock-in, EEE, and so forth.
- natfriedman 6y ago
  Yes, we are working on an official CLI here: https://github.com/cli/cli https://github.com/cli/cli I think open sourcing GitHub is an interesting idea.
  - freedomben 6y ago
    I love github, but the fact that it is not open source has always been a big problem to me, especially given that github has become the de-facto home for so many open source projects, yet is not itself open source. I would love to see that change to a model like Gitlab uses!
  - tekknolagi 6y ago
    Oh, I did not realize that was official & supported. Excellent. Looking forward to its maturity. Unrelated: have you seen https://sourcehut.org/ https://sourcehut.org/? Thoughts?
thramp 6y ago
This is a great change! One request: I wish that SAML was not an enterprise feature. SAML ought be a basic security feature like 2FA—it's especially valuable for open source teams who might use a mixture of services, and an easily accessible and cheap SSO solution would go a long way in raising the security bar for all teams, not just open source teams.
- vermorel 6y ago
  Agreed. SAML even makes sense for solo dev.
  - harha 6y ago
    could you elaborate further with use-cases?
    - tiffanyh 6y ago
      Not having to create separate usernames and passwords with yet another service (GitHub)
      - m01 6y ago
        With GitHub (cloud version) specifically it doesn't (currently) work that way, you still need a "normal" GitHub username and password, and you do the organisational SAML login in regular intervals when trying to access that org's resources. I'm not aware of this being a widespread way of doing SAML, but I guess it supports certain use-cases (like keeping a GitHub identity despite switching jobs/OSS projects). sources: * https://help.github.com/en/github/setting-up-and-managing-organizations-and-teams/about-identity-and-access-management-with-saml-single-sign-on https://help.github.com/en/github/setting-up-and-managing-or... * https://help.github.com/en/github/authenticating-to-github/about-authentication-with-saml-single-sign-on https://help.github.com/en/github/authenticating-to-github/a... [edit: formatting]
    - eastbayjake 6y ago
      As a business customer of a SaaS product, being able to revoke any employee's access to the SaaS tool if they are terminated. (Imagine how hard this would be for e.g. the SaaS tool your company uses to view financial reporting if it required every user at your company to create their own username/password. If you wanted to prevent someone from "going rogue" during termination, you would need to have an admin remove their account access prior to termination -- and do it on every SaaS product that person used. With SSO you revoke their access and everything gets locked out. Source: Watching an alcoholic CTO get fired by the board and taking the startup's hosted Mongo database hostage
cpascal 6y ago
This is completely unrelated to the announcement, but when will Enterprise Server ship support for GitHub Actions?
- natfriedman 6y ago
  We'll have a beta next month, and should ship this summer.
  - TheCraiggers 6y ago
    Oh thank god. I was getting close to jumping ship to GitLab, which supposedly has toptier CICD stuff. Now I can at least compare the two.
    - samanthalee233 6y ago
      Let us know how your comparison goes - we're doing a challenge asking community members to compare both tools and share their responses for some swag. I'm a community advocate at GitLab. This blog post outlines more of the challenge if you'd like to participate: https://about.gitlab.com/blog/2020/04/14/github-free-for-teams/ https://about.gitlab.com/blog/2020/04/14/github-free-for-tea...
atonse 6y ago
I would request similar to the sibling post, that at least OpenID Connect or some such SSO could be a feature for us smaller companies that still want to practice good security by doing SSO.
etherio 6y ago
I'd like to thank you for this change but also in general all the amazing things Github is doing. I haven't finished high school yet but your Github Education pack is SO useful for me and I know I will never have time to use half of the stuff on it. Thanks to everyone at Github making stuff like this possible and creating such a great epicenter for open source in general. Keep on being awesome! Also I was wondering, Github is offering so many features for free, but does the company sustain itself through entreprise payments or some other stream? I was just curious. :)
- natfriedman 6y ago
  Glad you like the Student Developer Pack. All credit goes to the 100+ partners who provide something like $200k in tools and services to each student who qualifies for the pack. It's kind of mind-boggling, actually. As for how we sustain ourselves -- lots of big enterprise customers!
  - Nullabillity 6y ago
    Good point. For anyone using the Student Developer Pack (or any other similar student offer), ask yourself this: Do you really want to become reliant on software and services that will cost you ~$70k/year as soon as you graduate? Well, unless they decide to switch market or shut down, in which case you're hosed no matter how much you're willing to pay.
    - thaumaturgy 6y ago
      C'mon, that's an unnecessarily cynical take. The offers in the student pack are here: https://education.github.com/pack https://education.github.com/pack You can see that there's a lot of overlap and that these offers cover very broad sections of the industry. This gives students the opportunity to explore and develop immediately employable skillsets without impacting their already limited budgets.
      - Nullabillity 6y ago
CreepGin 6y ago
Thanks for doing this. Is this effective immediately now? I tried to downgrade to free just now but it's giving me a giant list of features I'd lose if I continue. Also any change to Data pack pricing for LFS Data? Due to the on-going Pandemic, I've been trying to cut business costs left and right. Github Team was one of those I wanted to cut but it's also so important that I couldn't decide easily. So thanks again for the change. Much appreciated!
- ebrescia 6y ago
  It is effective immediately. There is a full FAQ here: https://help.github.com/en/github/getting-started-with-github/faq-about-changes-to-githubs-plans https://help.github.com/en/github/getting-started-with-githu... Essentially, "Pro" = Team - the only difference is whether it is an individual account or an organizational account. We'll work to clarify this on the site. No, there has not been any change to the data pack pricing for LFS data. Glad this will help you continue building on GitHub!
  - deleted 6y ago
    [deleted]
amsully 6y ago
Hi! Any perspective of extending SOC2 Report access to the Teams level? Small companies in regulated environments aren't able to jump to enterprise ($$$) so need to look elsewhere to get a SOC2 compliant version control system at a decent price. Love the Github product so it was tough when we had to make the decision to move off of it.
- grinich 6y ago
  I don't work at GitHub, but I believe if you reach out to GitHub Support and sign an NDA they can provide you the SOC-2 report. (Most vendors will do this.)
  - amsully 6y ago
    We reached out and were told we would need to upgrade to the enterprise version. (This was probably 5 months ago before they announced a few startup friendly offerings)
    - staticassertion 6y ago
      I'm curious why you need the SOC2 report itself instead of some sort of signed statement of compliance. The details of the SOC2 don't seem like they should be important?
      - grinich 6y ago
        When you're going through SOC-2, your auditor will ask for the SOC-2 report of each critical vendor.
        tomschlick 6y ago
        If you're at that level of auditing I'd expect your company has enough cash to fork over for GHE.
grinich 6y ago
Just want to say that I am _so_ happy and continue to be impressed but what you've done since joining GitHub. Feels like a big shift from even a couple years ago. On behalf of our tiny team at WorkOS, thanks! :)
jka 6y ago
Hi Nat - this is a really bold move, and shows how competitive the market for developer tooling is. Does GitHub anticipate that this pricing change will affect the proportion of code that's provided under free / open source licensing on your platform, and if so can you share any information regarding the direction GitHub would like to lead the community in?
pixelmonkey 6y ago
Hey Nat -- quick Q, with this change, is there any need for individual developers to pay for "Pro" accounts? Or did the benefits of a "Pro" account just get covered by the "Free" plan?
- angrygoat 6y ago
  It looks like pro accounts have vanished? I can't find them anywhere; I assume we just won't be charged from here on out?
  - Slylencer 6y ago
    My account still says GitHub Pro but the billing amount has changed to $4
  - ebrescia 6y ago
    Hi, I'm Erica, GitHub's COO. Pricing for Pro Accounts has been changed to $4/mo.It includes 2GB of Packages storage, 10 GB of data transfer and email support. You can downgrade your account to the Free tier if you'd like by following these steps: https://help.github.com/en/github/setting-up-and-managing-billing-and-payments-on-github/downgrading-your-github-subscription#downgrading-your-user-accounts-subscription https://help.github.com/en/github/setting-up-and-managing-bi... A full FAQ on pricing is available here: https://help.github.com/en/github/getting-started-with-github/faq-about-changes-to-githubs-plans https://help.github.com/en/github/getting-started-with-githu... Hope that's helpful!
    - ccmcarey 6y ago
      Seems kind of odd as Pro isn't listed on https://github.com/pricing https://github.com/pricing as far as I can see.
      - ebrescia 6y ago
        We're working on clarifying this.
    - 6y ago
pubby 6y ago
Hey Nat glad to see you here. A few days ago one of the biggest team collaborative games (Space Station 13) got banned on GitHub without a public explanation from GitHub staff, but some suspect it was because the code contained bad words and slurs. Do you know if this is why the project was banned, and will these new private team repos be subject to the same terms/rules?
- natfriedman 6y ago
  Private repos are not subject to our Community Guidelines on public content, so no, we don't enforce the same rules there: https://help.github.com/en/github/site-policy/github-community-guidelines https://help.github.com/en/github/site-policy/github-communi... I wasn't aware of SS13, and will look into what happened there. Content moderation at GitHub scale is hard and sometimes mistakes are made.
  - yjftsjthsd-h 6y ago
    > Content moderation at GitHub scale is hard and sometimes mistakes are made. This is completely fair, but lack of transparency makes it significantly more frustrating.
    - GordonS 6y ago
      Agree strongly with this. If a repo is public and gets banned, I think it's reasonable to expect that the community can know why, regardless of the rights or wrongs of the decision.
      - deleted 6y ago
        [deleted]
      - zerkten 6y ago
        It seems reasonable to expect this, but it can fall down in practice for several reasons: * Sometimes legal counsel provide advice that there should be no further response to the individual or organization. Often technical people don't understand this situation, but it doesn't change the merits of the legal advice. In smaller organizations a leader might take a chance in further engagement, if they think it's helpful, but it's unlikely a large organization would expose themselves to this risk. * Breakdown in internal response processes. You'll find that many people are really uncomfortable in these situations (e.g. compliance team shut down service, but don't "own" the response.) Unless the legal team has written a response and instructions on how to deliver it, you will often see people in organizations avoid giving the response. Things get passed down as low as they can go which doesn't help because there is less experience with handling tough situations. Very often some poor person with support ends up having to give the response and they basically ignore it because they can avoid the situation. This isn't very professional of the organization, but it's a reality.
JMTQp8lwXL 6y ago
I'd like to share feedback on GitHub Actions. Tried it out, and the learning curve was too much. I want to use stuff I already know -- e.g., write a Dockerfile, and then GH could run it on PR builds. The "workflow" concept didn't land for me, and I hope you consider a more generalized, open-source approach to running arbitrary scripts in response to PRs being opened, merges to master, etc.
- edaemon 6y ago
  Have you tried other CI/CD platforms? Different providers use different language but the workflow concept underpins all CI/CD pipelines.
  - JMTQp8lwXL 6y ago
    My team stuck with Jenkins, Docker, and custom shell scripts to get the job done.
- jeremy_k 6y ago
  They opened sourced the runner[0] if you're interested in learning how it works. Understanding the internals of it may or may not help the syntax and concepts of Actions land though. My guess is that it is unlikely to see your request for a more generalized script or Dockerfile runner realized because that (Dockerfiles) was the original implementation of Actions during the beta; they pivoted away from that to the current form. [0] - https://github.com/actions/runner https://github.com/actions/runner
- armadsen 6y ago
  Counterpoint: I've never used Docker at all (I'm a Mac/iOS dev), and was able to get GitHub actions set up and doing what I needed it to in ~30 minutes. Its general similarity to other CI/CD solutions, TravisCI being the one I'm most familiar with, helped a lot.
  - technics256 6y ago
    As an ios dev too, do you have any favorite actions you can recommend?
sstephenson 6y ago
When will GitHub terminate its contract with ICE?
anonymoushn 6y ago
Hi Nat, will GitHub ever support git diff algorithms other than the default?
KenoFischer 6y ago
While we have your here, any plans for more fine-grained IAM for GitHub Apps? It's already a lot better than legacy apps, but it's still pretty broad. Ideally every API call/resource could be specified individually in an IAM policy, so we can only request the minimum permissions possible in our GitHub Apps.
oxalorg 6y ago
Hey Nat, thank you so much for this! We're a small team from India and we love Github but were always conflicted due to the pricing. The new flat price of $4/user seems perfect for us. I've already moved one private repo to our org account. Thanks again ^_^
- captn3m0 6y ago
  Just curious what motivates you to pick the $4 plan over free? None of the features there are really deal-breaking for most orgs. - Required reviewers - 3,000 Actions minutes/month (Free for public repositories) - 2GB of GitHub Packages storage (Free for public repositories) - Code owners
  - judge2020 6y ago
    Kind of off-topic but for $4/user/month only 2gb of private GH packages storage is laughably low, and the pay-as-you-go pricing model is pretty expensive if you want to use it for docker images.
  - masklinn 6y ago
    If you check the extended breakdown down the https://github.com/pricing https://github.com/pricing page below the marketing bits, lots of features are not available on private repos unless you're paying for a Teams plan. Depending how you use github it could be an issue: * protected branches * codeowners * draft PRs * pages and wikis * multiple assignees (PRs and issues) * required reviews & status checks
  - oxalorg 6y ago
    Hey, captain nemo! The major feature which we're looking for is Github Pages for private repos, coupled with Github actions. We have multiple client sites (completely static) we're hosting on $5 Droplets (+GST+Backups). We plan to deploy more such sites and keeping them on Gh-pages (auto build using GH-Actions) would reduce a lot of headaches for us. Right now we've had all private repos scattered over everyones individual accounts and managing this has been a pain. So it would be nice if there is a single place to keep it all (thanks to free private repos for teams, we'll be migrating all of it to one place soon enough). With 3 team members, $12/month for all the extra goodies seems reasonable. We initially used BitBucket but switched to GitHub as we prefer it's UI/UX/Familiarity + a single place to manage both work/open source issues/prs etc is definitely easier. Oh and gotta need that repo/contributor insight to compete with team mates :P
oefrha 6y ago
First of all, thank you, this is great news. That said, the news made me wonder what exactly I’m still paying for with my personal Pro account. I went to the pricing page https://github.com/pricing https://github.com/pricing and it seems Pro isn’t even listed anymore? And the Billings page https://github.com/settings/billing https://github.com/settings/billing says “Pages, Wikis, protected branches and more for Pro developers” without any further explanation or link to docs explaining the differences. I can only assume that Pro has the same set of features as the $4/user/mo Team plan, but the messaging is certainly pretty confusing, don’t you think? (I sure hope this isn’t a sign of neglect for individual developers, who are still the backbone of open source activities.)
- pkamb 6y ago
  I went to go downgrade to the free plan and noticed that GitHub Pages static sites served from Private repos still require payment. That will keep me on $4/month for now.
  - SlavikCA 6y ago
    I'm curious: since GitHub Pages intended to PUBLISH pages, why to make the repo PRIVATE?
    - shishy 6y ago
      Sometimes people want to keep the code, commits, etc. private but maintain a blog
      - oaiey 6y ago
        Use a private repo, attach a code action to publish your output of your favourite blog to static html output to a public GitHub pages repo.
        pc86 6y ago
        Nobody's saying it's not possible with a hack or workaround, just that it doesn't work out of the box.
KenoFischer 6y ago
Hmm, looks like GitHub pages are a paid feature? One of our private repos hosts our (public) website. Even with the price cut, the Team plan is still almost $100/month more expensive than the grandfathered in legacy plan we currently have that includes GitHub pages.
- Tepix 6y ago
  Github pages are free for public repos, aren't they? Perhaps switching to a public repo is an option.
  - KenoFischer 6y ago
    Yes, I considered it, but that's how unfinished draft blog posts end up on HN ;). We'll probably just stop using Pages and deploy to S3 instead - it's a fairly minimal change.
    - amjd 6y ago
      Or you can use Netlify connected to a private GitHub repo. I use it for my personal website (hugo blog) and it works flawlessly. CI/CD integrated, so it's just push to deploy.
polskibus 6y ago
Any plans for free on prem version, like Gitlab?
- tracker1 6y ago
  Considering Github Enterprise (which offers on-prem) is their main feature, and main source of revenue (paying for the free stuff) it's really unlikely. Why not just use Gitlab if you really need on-prem for cheap/free?
  - zmmmmm 6y ago
    Heh, well, there you go - it's exactly why we are using Gitlab. It's going to be a pressure point for them just lke the free private repos has been previously.
deleted 6y ago
[deleted]
tomphoolery 6y ago
This is amazing for us folks towing the line between open-source and proprietary, enabling an open core while allowing access to our closed-source products without having to leave GitHub. Right now, we mirror our GitHub repos to a private Bitbucket server so that our clients can make PRs and such, but now we can just add their GitHub accounts to our team! We do have a paid plan, right now. Is there any way to continue having that paid plan on the team (paying per user for the extra features) while also adding users who don't share the extra features? We'd like to open up our org to all of our clients who use our private repos, but we don't want them to e.g. have access to all the private k8s cluster configs.
est31 6y ago
Hi, any reason to still have a restriction on number of free bot accounts one may have (currently one)? There are limitations in products built on GitHub that require you to create multiple accounts if you don't want to share tokens between repositories (bad idea security wise): https://github.com/rust-lang/crates.io/issues/849#issuecomment-571598151 https://github.com/rust-lang/crates.io/issues/849#issuecomme...
GordonS 6y ago
Hi Nat, with Microsoft now owning Github, I'm really curious to know what the future holds for both Azure DevOps and Github? I'm a user of both - Github for OSS, and Azure DevOps for private work. IMO, these areas are where they are best suited - pipelines in particular are really powerful in Azure DevOps, and user/permission management, AAD integration and integration with build agents are all excellent. I really like Azure DevOps, but all this has me worried about it's future - do you know if it's going to continue to exist and be developed in tandem with Github?
- lukevp 6y ago
  Same question here. We use the hosted version of Azure DevOps for work, but I use github for open source contributions. They both have their place, and DevOps feels more suited to enterprise use than GitHub right now.
- diminish 6y ago
  Do you plan to make github enterprise available for free on their own premises for teams?
  - sathyabhat 6y ago
    This has been possible since long, what am I missing?
    - res0nat0r 6y ago
      I'm assuming he means on-prem GHE, for free, which I would doubt since that would eat away their revenue.
  - tracker1 6y ago
    If you REALLY need to self-host, try Gitlab.
- annallanza 6y ago
  jhgfc
- 6y ago
harikb 6y ago
Slightly off topic, but I would like to request that you open Github for Education [1] for pandemic-related home-schoolers. Currently it requires verification as an accredited school & credentials. Any help is appreciated. [1] https://education.github.com/schools https://education.github.com/schools
- jedieaston 6y ago
  When I signed up for the Student Dev Pack originally in HS, the school district's evil IT department blocked mail from outside domains for whatever reason, so I sent GitHub a picture of my schedule (which had the name of the school and my name on it), and they accepted it. If you have evidence of being a home schooler (I believe there's some paperwork you have to file with the government?), they'll probably take it too. And for the classroom system, it's open-source (https://classroom.github.com/ https://classroom.github.com/) and you can run it on a box at home. That'd work given you probably only have a couple users at any one time.
  - jsmith45 6y ago
    It was open source, but they have now closed it off, although the old source archive is still available. See https://github.com/education/classroom/commit/a824a057b939c0bbbbad2a9258aa700baef80ef1 https://github.com/education/classroom/commit/a824a057b939c0...
DagAgren 6y ago
Are you still providing services to people who put children in cages?
gigatexal 6y ago
Biz question for you: do you think given enough of a run way i.e time you could have gotten to that enterprise run rate without Microsoft or have customers come to you now that you have Microsoft's backing -- i.e has that made sales easier?
wikibob 6y ago
Hi Nat, What's the plans for integrating Microsoft's VFS for Git into GitHub? https://github.com/microsoft/VFSForGit https://github.com/microsoft/VFSForGit
freyfogle 6y ago
I currently pay for a Github Silver plan annually ($600). When I try to downgrade to Free I get a message (in red) "You will no longer be able to access your private repositories or create new private repositories." How do I downgrade without losing all my private repos. Thank you!
- floatingatoll 6y ago
  When you emailed this question to GitHub Support, how did they respond?
- martinwoodward 6y ago
  Martin from GitHub here. Sorry about that message - team are rolling out an update to change the text and should be fixed soon. In the meantime if you ignore that message and downgrade from a legacy plan to Free then you will retain access to your private repositories.
  - freyfogle 6y ago
    thanks for the fast and reassuring answer, I appreciate it. I'll wait until that message goes away, I can't risk losing my private repos.
  - disillusioned 6y ago
    Is the system supposed to be charging for outside collaborators on the Team plan still? The language makes it sound like those should be free now.
itamarst 6y ago
Why do you still have a contract with ICE?
thinkingemote 6y ago
> every developer on earth This now includes Iran, Syria, and Crimea. Bravo
- yekanchi 6y ago
  No, It doesn't
carapace 6y ago
> Existing customers will have their bills automatically reduced going forward. That is a class act right there. Now, if you would open source github... I kid. I have zero hope that that will ever happen. It has always been bizarre (IMO) that arguably the most popular open source dev forge, er, hub, is closed and proprietary. But what can you do? Remember when all those FOSS devs sent an open letter to github whining about that and begging for attention? https://github.com/dear-github/dear-github https://github.com/dear-github/dear-github (Ironically, they "signed" it by filling out a Google docs spreadsheet! As opposed to, say, patching a file.) Utterly bizarre. And now they have done it again, apparently because GitHub serves ICE: https://github.com/drop-ice/dear-github-2.0 https://github.com/drop-ice/dear-github-2.0 They "call upon GitHub to: Immediately cancel your contract with ICE ; Commit yourself to a higher ethical standard with all of your business dealings ..." [in writing]. But they stop short of threatening to leave if GitHub doesn't comply with their demands. Leaving aside the politics of ICE, and the strangeness of talking to "GitHub" like it's a single person, it seems to me that without taking some action (like moving to e.g. Srht or self-hosting a DVCS hub) that this is just posturing. Anyway, congratulations on sucking more air out of the room of FOSS development. In the words of the aforementioned, undersigned, concerned peasants, excuse me! users, of GitHub: > We still believe in GitHub as a platform, as a place to help the open source community make the world a genuinely better place. Please, step up and join us.
znpy 6y ago
Will there ever be an OSS version of GitHub, a la Gitlab?
aschatten 6y ago
This great news, I appreciate the free stuff, but on the other hand free stuff can be tricky as the company must make money. So I hope that your enterprise model will work.
mato 6y ago
Hi Nat. Just to clarify, do these pricing changes imply that users without a paid plan will no longer receive any e-mail support from GitHub? Speaking as a long-time user, over the last 10(?) years I've only ever needed to reach out to support@ twice or so, both times with fairly obscure issues that were promptly dealt with -- thank you. It'd be a shame if the implied change to "community support only" for free accounts means that free users no longer have any direct way to contact support.
Lucasoato 6y ago
Hi Nat, first of all thanks from every developer in the world. I think this is going to be a great step forward for people who don't need enterprise features (yet). One question: is this service going to be available in countries that are currently hit by US sanctions? (eg. Iran) Thanks again
bamboozled 6y ago
Excuse me for being cynical, but I read this announcement as: “Because nothing is truly free, we will be selling your data to pay for this new seemingly free service.” If this is what you’re doing, if the privacy policy changes, I’ll be very disappointed. How will this be funded? We’re customers actually against paying a small free to use the service?
- colinloretz 6y ago
  Read his comment again. They are supporting the free plans with Github Enterprise. > We've wanted to make this change for the last 18 months, but needed our Enterprise business to be big enough to enable the free use of GitHub by the rest of the world. I'm happy to say that it's grown dramatically in the last year, and so we're able to make GitHub free for teams that don't need Enterprise features.
  - bamboozled 6y ago
    Being an SRE who’s worked for a lot of different companies, I can tell you building and hosting something like GitHub is expensive, it seems unreal to me they’re selling enough self hosted solutions to pay for everything and keep GitHub profitable.
    - yani 6y ago
      Business and first class on planes pays for the trip. Economy can be free.
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]
- batmenace 6y ago
  Not sure how that's your takeaway from the announcement? Sounds more like they can cover the costs of hosting free plans from the revenue through enterprise customers, and so can attrack more customers without having to charge them
maa5444 6y ago
it looks uncle Bill after the #shitstorm... wants to give some charms away ... enjoy lads ... I ll not
jpomykala 6y ago
Hey how about introducing a function to create a branches from issues
zapttt 6y ago
nice play. rigth out of Microsoft playbook. in a time where competiton is triving and github is not synonymous of opensource anymore, offer free stuff to embrace (fake you still support opensource), extend (offer cpu time), extinguish (kill the budding competition before they can establish themselves) I guess you asked for a question, so here is one: which of these true open source supporters are you more afraid of: gitlab? codeberg? others we should know about? thank you!
vertis 6y ago
Hi nat, I came here prepared to ask about how this would play out for annual billing customers since I only just set it up in March. On searching, I can't actually find where you charged me, so I suspect you might have pre-empted this. So instead of a question, this is more thank you. I'm a tiny bootstrapped startup and was only using 3 of the 5 previously minimum seats. I'm a prime beneficiary of this change, and look forward (fingers crossed) to being one of the enterprise customers that pays for everyone else :D For others, can you elaborate on how this will work for current annual billing customers, I found some vague references but no detail. Thank you
- pookeh 6y ago
  Came here to ask the same thing. I literally set up Teams @ $25/month for 2 seats only and paid in full for annual... How does this price change affect me? Also, has the number of minutes for Actions gone down from 10k to 2k monthly?
ss3000 6y ago
Can you explain what happened to Atom development? I've seen numerous posts noting the sharp decline in contribution soon after the acquisition was announced. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22601451 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22601451 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21142934 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21142934 Without an official explanation, given the timing, it'd be reasonable to assume you pulled development resources away from it, the exact thing you actually went on Reddit to claim you wouldn't do: https://www.reddit.com/r/AMA/comments/8pc8mf/im_nat_friedman_future_ceo_of_github_ama/e0a2b2e/ https://www.reddit.com/r/AMA/comments/8pc8mf/im_nat_friedman... P.S. I've observed that these kinds of posts tend to turn into a place where people shit on Atom in favor of _insert preferred other editor here_. Feel free to do that here too, but just note that I'm not going to be obliged to engage since it's completely orthogonal to the topic at hand. I think any remaining Atom users at this point are likely already painfully aware that Atom has long since lost the war in developer mindshare, but don't let that stop you from pouring salt on the wound.
- spiderfarmer 6y ago
  I gave up on Atom this month because of the lack of development. Too bad really.
  - poutrathor 6y ago
    I gave up on Atom when it was released because it was the most slow editor I have ever seen. It single handy bias me against Electron app until I discover VSCode.
    - seumars 6y ago
      VSCode is electron-based.
      - maattdd 6y ago
        This is precisely what he is saying.
    - 6y ago
tomerbd 6y ago
Introducing pomodoro technique into the tasks would be great.
Keats 6y ago
Can making Github Actions share code between them be a super high priority? Copy/pasting all the setup for a project on each action is repetitive and any time you need to make a change, you need to make it in 6-7 places in our case.
TheRealPomax 6y ago
Forgive the skeptic in me: from the outside, it looks like MS is pushing GH to copy features that people use GitLab for right now - how much of this is "we're going to move into GL's space" vs. "this is our own thing"? (because I'm sure MS wouldn't mind if GL's IPO went less than swimmingly because GH duplicated a number of their selling points "for free" ("for now"))
wackget 6y ago
Are you aware that GitHub users still can't sort their repositories into folders? Because that's definitely one reason why some developers still don't use GitHub. Take a look at this request which has been open for years and remains unfulfilled: https://github.com/dear-github/dear-github/issues/74 https://github.com/dear-github/dear-github/issues/74 Is there a reason that such incredibly basic functionality doesn't exist on GitHub but does on all your competitors' offerings?

tekknolagi 6y ago

Hi Nat. Big fan. I've been on GitHub for a long time now. There's a fair bit of friction in issue/PR management for people who have primarily CLI-centered workflows. I know that `hub` and friends exist, but will there be official, supported clients in the future? Also: are there plans to open source more of GitHub? Post Microsoft acquisition, I have been increasingly concerned about vendor lock-in, EEE, and so forth.

natfriedman 6y ago
Yes, we are working on an official CLI here: https://github.com/cli/cli https://github.com/cli/cli I think open sourcing GitHub is an interesting idea.
- freedomben 6y ago
  I love github, but the fact that it is not open source has always been a big problem to me, especially given that github has become the de-facto home for so many open source projects, yet is not itself open source. I would love to see that change to a model like Gitlab uses!
- tekknolagi 6y ago
  Oh, I did not realize that was official & supported. Excellent. Looking forward to its maturity. Unrelated: have you seen https://sourcehut.org/ https://sourcehut.org/? Thoughts?

thramp 6y ago

This is a great change! One request: I wish that SAML was not an enterprise feature. SAML ought be a basic security feature like 2FA—it's especially valuable for open source teams who might use a mixture of services, and an easily accessible and cheap SSO solution would go a long way in raising the security bar for all teams, not just open source teams.

vermorel 6y ago
Agreed. SAML even makes sense for solo dev.
- harha 6y ago
  could you elaborate further with use-cases?
  - tiffanyh 6y ago
    Not having to create separate usernames and passwords with yet another service (GitHub)
    - m01 6y ago
      With GitHub (cloud version) specifically it doesn't (currently) work that way, you still need a "normal" GitHub username and password, and you do the organisational SAML login in regular intervals when trying to access that org's resources. I'm not aware of this being a widespread way of doing SAML, but I guess it supports certain use-cases (like keeping a GitHub identity despite switching jobs/OSS projects). sources: * https://help.github.com/en/github/setting-up-and-managing-organizations-and-teams/about-identity-and-access-management-with-saml-single-sign-on https://help.github.com/en/github/setting-up-and-managing-or... * https://help.github.com/en/github/authenticating-to-github/about-authentication-with-saml-single-sign-on https://help.github.com/en/github/authenticating-to-github/a... [edit: formatting]
  - eastbayjake 6y ago
    As a business customer of a SaaS product, being able to revoke any employee's access to the SaaS tool if they are terminated. (Imagine how hard this would be for e.g. the SaaS tool your company uses to view financial reporting if it required every user at your company to create their own username/password. If you wanted to prevent someone from "going rogue" during termination, you would need to have an admin remove their account access prior to termination -- and do it on every SaaS product that person used. With SSO you revoke their access and everything gets locked out. Source: Watching an alcoholic CTO get fired by the board and taking the startup's hosted Mongo database hostage

cpascal 6y ago

This is completely unrelated to the announcement, but when will Enterprise Server ship support for GitHub Actions?

natfriedman 6y ago
We'll have a beta next month, and should ship this summer.
- TheCraiggers 6y ago
  Oh thank god. I was getting close to jumping ship to GitLab, which supposedly has toptier CICD stuff. Now I can at least compare the two.
  - samanthalee233 6y ago
    Let us know how your comparison goes - we're doing a challenge asking community members to compare both tools and share their responses for some swag. I'm a community advocate at GitLab. This blog post outlines more of the challenge if you'd like to participate: https://about.gitlab.com/blog/2020/04/14/github-free-for-teams/ https://about.gitlab.com/blog/2020/04/14/github-free-for-tea...

atonse 6y ago

I would request similar to the sibling post, that at least OpenID Connect or some such SSO could be a feature for us smaller companies that still want to practice good security by doing SSO.

etherio 6y ago

I'd like to thank you for this change but also in general all the amazing things Github is doing. I haven't finished high school yet but your Github Education pack is SO useful for me and I know I will never have time to use half of the stuff on it. Thanks to everyone at Github making stuff like this possible and creating such a great epicenter for open source in general. Keep on being awesome! Also I was wondering, Github is offering so many features for free, but does the company sustain itself through entreprise payments or some other stream? I was just curious. :)

natfriedman 6y ago
Glad you like the Student Developer Pack. All credit goes to the 100+ partners who provide something like $200k in tools and services to each student who qualifies for the pack. It's kind of mind-boggling, actually. As for how we sustain ourselves -- lots of big enterprise customers!
- Nullabillity 6y ago
  Good point. For anyone using the Student Developer Pack (or any other similar student offer), ask yourself this: Do you really want to become reliant on software and services that will cost you ~$70k/year as soon as you graduate? Well, unless they decide to switch market or shut down, in which case you're hosed no matter how much you're willing to pay.
  - thaumaturgy 6y ago
    C'mon, that's an unnecessarily cynical take. The offers in the student pack are here: https://education.github.com/pack https://education.github.com/pack You can see that there's a lot of overlap and that these offers cover very broad sections of the industry. This gives students the opportunity to explore and develop immediately employable skillsets without impacting their already limited budgets.
    - Nullabillity 6y ago

CreepGin 6y ago

Thanks for doing this. Is this effective immediately now? I tried to downgrade to free just now but it's giving me a giant list of features I'd lose if I continue. Also any change to Data pack pricing for LFS Data? Due to the on-going Pandemic, I've been trying to cut business costs left and right. Github Team was one of those I wanted to cut but it's also so important that I couldn't decide easily. So thanks again for the change. Much appreciated!

ebrescia 6y ago
It is effective immediately. There is a full FAQ here: https://help.github.com/en/github/getting-started-with-github/faq-about-changes-to-githubs-plans https://help.github.com/en/github/getting-started-with-githu... Essentially, "Pro" = Team - the only difference is whether it is an individual account or an organizational account. We'll work to clarify this on the site. No, there has not been any change to the data pack pricing for LFS data. Glad this will help you continue building on GitHub!
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]

amsully 6y ago

Hi! Any perspective of extending SOC2 Report access to the Teams level? Small companies in regulated environments aren't able to jump to enterprise ($$$) so need to look elsewhere to get a SOC2 compliant version control system at a decent price. Love the Github product so it was tough when we had to make the decision to move off of it.

grinich 6y ago
I don't work at GitHub, but I believe if you reach out to GitHub Support and sign an NDA they can provide you the SOC-2 report. (Most vendors will do this.)
- amsully 6y ago
  We reached out and were told we would need to upgrade to the enterprise version. (This was probably 5 months ago before they announced a few startup friendly offerings)
  - staticassertion 6y ago
    I'm curious why you need the SOC2 report itself instead of some sort of signed statement of compliance. The details of the SOC2 don't seem like they should be important?
    - grinich 6y ago
      When you're going through SOC-2, your auditor will ask for the SOC-2 report of each critical vendor.
      - tomschlick 6y ago
        If you're at that level of auditing I'd expect your company has enough cash to fork over for GHE.

grinich 6y ago

Just want to say that I am _so_ happy and continue to be impressed but what you've done since joining GitHub. Feels like a big shift from even a couple years ago. On behalf of our tiny team at WorkOS, thanks! :)

jka 6y ago

Hi Nat - this is a really bold move, and shows how competitive the market for developer tooling is. Does GitHub anticipate that this pricing change will affect the proportion of code that's provided under free / open source licensing on your platform, and if so can you share any information regarding the direction GitHub would like to lead the community in?

pixelmonkey 6y ago

Hey Nat -- quick Q, with this change, is there any need for individual developers to pay for "Pro" accounts? Or did the benefits of a "Pro" account just get covered by the "Free" plan?

angrygoat 6y ago
It looks like pro accounts have vanished? I can't find them anywhere; I assume we just won't be charged from here on out?
- Slylencer 6y ago
  My account still says GitHub Pro but the billing amount has changed to $4
- ebrescia 6y ago
  Hi, I'm Erica, GitHub's COO. Pricing for Pro Accounts has been changed to $4/mo.It includes 2GB of Packages storage, 10 GB of data transfer and email support. You can downgrade your account to the Free tier if you'd like by following these steps: https://help.github.com/en/github/setting-up-and-managing-billing-and-payments-on-github/downgrading-your-github-subscription#downgrading-your-user-accounts-subscription https://help.github.com/en/github/setting-up-and-managing-bi... A full FAQ on pricing is available here: https://help.github.com/en/github/getting-started-with-github/faq-about-changes-to-githubs-plans https://help.github.com/en/github/getting-started-with-githu... Hope that's helpful!
  - ccmcarey 6y ago
    Seems kind of odd as Pro isn't listed on https://github.com/pricing https://github.com/pricing as far as I can see.
    - ebrescia 6y ago
      We're working on clarifying this.
  - 6y ago

pubby 6y ago

Hey Nat glad to see you here. A few days ago one of the biggest team collaborative games (Space Station 13) got banned on GitHub without a public explanation from GitHub staff, but some suspect it was because the code contained bad words and slurs. Do you know if this is why the project was banned, and will these new private team repos be subject to the same terms/rules?

natfriedman 6y ago
Private repos are not subject to our Community Guidelines on public content, so no, we don't enforce the same rules there: https://help.github.com/en/github/site-policy/github-community-guidelines https://help.github.com/en/github/site-policy/github-communi... I wasn't aware of SS13, and will look into what happened there. Content moderation at GitHub scale is hard and sometimes mistakes are made.
- yjftsjthsd-h 6y ago
  > Content moderation at GitHub scale is hard and sometimes mistakes are made. This is completely fair, but lack of transparency makes it significantly more frustrating.
  - GordonS 6y ago
    Agree strongly with this. If a repo is public and gets banned, I think it's reasonable to expect that the community can know why, regardless of the rights or wrongs of the decision.
    - deleted 6y ago
      [deleted]
    - zerkten 6y ago
      It seems reasonable to expect this, but it can fall down in practice for several reasons: * Sometimes legal counsel provide advice that there should be no further response to the individual or organization. Often technical people don't understand this situation, but it doesn't change the merits of the legal advice. In smaller organizations a leader might take a chance in further engagement, if they think it's helpful, but it's unlikely a large organization would expose themselves to this risk. * Breakdown in internal response processes. You'll find that many people are really uncomfortable in these situations (e.g. compliance team shut down service, but don't "own" the response.) Unless the legal team has written a response and instructions on how to deliver it, you will often see people in organizations avoid giving the response. Things get passed down as low as they can go which doesn't help because there is less experience with handling tough situations. Very often some poor person with support ends up having to give the response and they basically ignore it because they can avoid the situation. This isn't very professional of the organization, but it's a reality.

JMTQp8lwXL 6y ago

I'd like to share feedback on GitHub Actions. Tried it out, and the learning curve was too much. I want to use stuff I already know -- e.g., write a Dockerfile, and then GH could run it on PR builds. The "workflow" concept didn't land for me, and I hope you consider a more generalized, open-source approach to running arbitrary scripts in response to PRs being opened, merges to master, etc.

edaemon 6y ago
Have you tried other CI/CD platforms? Different providers use different language but the workflow concept underpins all CI/CD pipelines.
- JMTQp8lwXL 6y ago
  My team stuck with Jenkins, Docker, and custom shell scripts to get the job done.
jeremy_k 6y ago
They opened sourced the runner[0] if you're interested in learning how it works. Understanding the internals of it may or may not help the syntax and concepts of Actions land though. My guess is that it is unlikely to see your request for a more generalized script or Dockerfile runner realized because that (Dockerfiles) was the original implementation of Actions during the beta; they pivoted away from that to the current form. [0] - https://github.com/actions/runner https://github.com/actions/runner
armadsen 6y ago
Counterpoint: I've never used Docker at all (I'm a Mac/iOS dev), and was able to get GitHub actions set up and doing what I needed it to in ~30 minutes. Its general similarity to other CI/CD solutions, TravisCI being the one I'm most familiar with, helped a lot.
- technics256 6y ago
  As an ios dev too, do you have any favorite actions you can recommend?

sstephenson 6y ago

When will GitHub terminate its contract with ICE?

anonymoushn 6y ago

Hi Nat, will GitHub ever support git diff algorithms other than the default?

KenoFischer 6y ago

While we have your here, any plans for more fine-grained IAM for GitHub Apps? It's already a lot better than legacy apps, but it's still pretty broad. Ideally every API call/resource could be specified individually in an IAM policy, so we can only request the minimum permissions possible in our GitHub Apps.

oxalorg 6y ago

Hey Nat, thank you so much for this! We're a small team from India and we love Github but were always conflicted due to the pricing. The new flat price of $4/user seems perfect for us. I've already moved one private repo to our org account. Thanks again ^_^

captn3m0 6y ago
Just curious what motivates you to pick the $4 plan over free? None of the features there are really deal-breaking for most orgs. - Required reviewers - 3,000 Actions minutes/month (Free for public repositories) - 2GB of GitHub Packages storage (Free for public repositories) - Code owners
- judge2020 6y ago
  Kind of off-topic but for $4/user/month only 2gb of private GH packages storage is laughably low, and the pay-as-you-go pricing model is pretty expensive if you want to use it for docker images.
- masklinn 6y ago
  If you check the extended breakdown down the https://github.com/pricing https://github.com/pricing page below the marketing bits, lots of features are not available on private repos unless you're paying for a Teams plan. Depending how you use github it could be an issue: * protected branches * codeowners * draft PRs * pages and wikis * multiple assignees (PRs and issues) * required reviews & status checks
- oxalorg 6y ago
  Hey, captain nemo! The major feature which we're looking for is Github Pages for private repos, coupled with Github actions. We have multiple client sites (completely static) we're hosting on $5 Droplets (+GST+Backups). We plan to deploy more such sites and keeping them on Gh-pages (auto build using GH-Actions) would reduce a lot of headaches for us. Right now we've had all private repos scattered over everyones individual accounts and managing this has been a pain. So it would be nice if there is a single place to keep it all (thanks to free private repos for teams, we'll be migrating all of it to one place soon enough). With 3 team members, $12/month for all the extra goodies seems reasonable. We initially used BitBucket but switched to GitHub as we prefer it's UI/UX/Familiarity + a single place to manage both work/open source issues/prs etc is definitely easier. Oh and gotta need that repo/contributor insight to compete with team mates :P

oefrha 6y ago

First of all, thank you, this is great news. That said, the news made me wonder what exactly I’m still paying for with my personal Pro account. I went to the pricing page https://github.com/pricing https://github.com/pricing and it seems Pro isn’t even listed anymore? And the Billings page https://github.com/settings/billing https://github.com/settings/billing says “Pages, Wikis, protected branches and more for Pro developers” without any further explanation or link to docs explaining the differences. I can only assume that Pro has the same set of features as the $4/user/mo Team plan, but the messaging is certainly pretty confusing, don’t you think? (I sure hope this isn’t a sign of neglect for individual developers, who are still the backbone of open source activities.)

pkamb 6y ago
I went to go downgrade to the free plan and noticed that GitHub Pages static sites served from Private repos still require payment. That will keep me on $4/month for now.
- SlavikCA 6y ago
  I'm curious: since GitHub Pages intended to PUBLISH pages, why to make the repo PRIVATE?
  - shishy 6y ago
    Sometimes people want to keep the code, commits, etc. private but maintain a blog
    - oaiey 6y ago
      Use a private repo, attach a code action to publish your output of your favourite blog to static html output to a public GitHub pages repo.
      - pc86 6y ago
        Nobody's saying it's not possible with a hack or workaround, just that it doesn't work out of the box.

KenoFischer 6y ago

Hmm, looks like GitHub pages are a paid feature? One of our private repos hosts our (public) website. Even with the price cut, the Team plan is still almost $100/month more expensive than the grandfathered in legacy plan we currently have that includes GitHub pages.

Tepix 6y ago
Github pages are free for public repos, aren't they? Perhaps switching to a public repo is an option.
- KenoFischer 6y ago
  Yes, I considered it, but that's how unfinished draft blog posts end up on HN ;). We'll probably just stop using Pages and deploy to S3 instead - it's a fairly minimal change.
  - amjd 6y ago
    Or you can use Netlify connected to a private GitHub repo. I use it for my personal website (hugo blog) and it works flawlessly. CI/CD integrated, so it's just push to deploy.

polskibus 6y ago

Any plans for free on prem version, like Gitlab?

tracker1 6y ago
Considering Github Enterprise (which offers on-prem) is their main feature, and main source of revenue (paying for the free stuff) it's really unlikely. Why not just use Gitlab if you really need on-prem for cheap/free?
- zmmmmm 6y ago
  Heh, well, there you go - it's exactly why we are using Gitlab. It's going to be a pressure point for them just lke the free private repos has been previously.

deleted 6y ago

[deleted]

tomphoolery 6y ago

This is amazing for us folks towing the line between open-source and proprietary, enabling an open core while allowing access to our closed-source products without having to leave GitHub. Right now, we mirror our GitHub repos to a private Bitbucket server so that our clients can make PRs and such, but now we can just add their GitHub accounts to our team! We do have a paid plan, right now. Is there any way to continue having that paid plan on the team (paying per user for the extra features) while also adding users who don't share the extra features? We'd like to open up our org to all of our clients who use our private repos, but we don't want them to e.g. have access to all the private k8s cluster configs.

est31 6y ago

Hi, any reason to still have a restriction on number of free bot accounts one may have (currently one)? There are limitations in products built on GitHub that require you to create multiple accounts if you don't want to share tokens between repositories (bad idea security wise): https://github.com/rust-lang/crates.io/issues/849#issuecomment-571598151 https://github.com/rust-lang/crates.io/issues/849#issuecomme...

GordonS 6y ago

Hi Nat, with Microsoft now owning Github, I'm really curious to know what the future holds for both Azure DevOps and Github? I'm a user of both - Github for OSS, and Azure DevOps for private work. IMO, these areas are where they are best suited - pipelines in particular are really powerful in Azure DevOps, and user/permission management, AAD integration and integration with build agents are all excellent. I really like Azure DevOps, but all this has me worried about it's future - do you know if it's going to continue to exist and be developed in tandem with Github?

lukevp 6y ago
Same question here. We use the hosted version of Azure DevOps for work, but I use github for open source contributions. They both have their place, and DevOps feels more suited to enterprise use than GitHub right now.
diminish 6y ago
Do you plan to make github enterprise available for free on their own premises for teams?
- sathyabhat 6y ago
  This has been possible since long, what am I missing?
  - res0nat0r 6y ago
    I'm assuming he means on-prem GHE, for free, which I would doubt since that would eat away their revenue.
- tracker1 6y ago
  If you REALLY need to self-host, try Gitlab.
annallanza 6y ago
jhgfc
6y ago

harikb 6y ago

Slightly off topic, but I would like to request that you open Github for Education [1] for pandemic-related home-schoolers. Currently it requires verification as an accredited school & credentials. Any help is appreciated. [1] https://education.github.com/schools https://education.github.com/schools

jedieaston 6y ago
When I signed up for the Student Dev Pack originally in HS, the school district's evil IT department blocked mail from outside domains for whatever reason, so I sent GitHub a picture of my schedule (which had the name of the school and my name on it), and they accepted it. If you have evidence of being a home schooler (I believe there's some paperwork you have to file with the government?), they'll probably take it too. And for the classroom system, it's open-source (https://classroom.github.com/ https://classroom.github.com/) and you can run it on a box at home. That'd work given you probably only have a couple users at any one time.
- jsmith45 6y ago
  It was open source, but they have now closed it off, although the old source archive is still available. See https://github.com/education/classroom/commit/a824a057b939c0bbbbad2a9258aa700baef80ef1 https://github.com/education/classroom/commit/a824a057b939c0...

DagAgren 6y ago

Are you still providing services to people who put children in cages?

gigatexal 6y ago

Biz question for you: do you think given enough of a run way i.e time you could have gotten to that enterprise run rate without Microsoft or have customers come to you now that you have Microsoft's backing -- i.e has that made sales easier?

wikibob 6y ago

Hi Nat, What's the plans for integrating Microsoft's VFS for Git into GitHub? https://github.com/microsoft/VFSForGit https://github.com/microsoft/VFSForGit

freyfogle 6y ago

I currently pay for a Github Silver plan annually ($600). When I try to downgrade to Free I get a message (in red) "You will no longer be able to access your private repositories or create new private repositories." How do I downgrade without losing all my private repos. Thank you!

floatingatoll 6y ago
When you emailed this question to GitHub Support, how did they respond?
martinwoodward 6y ago
Martin from GitHub here. Sorry about that message - team are rolling out an update to change the text and should be fixed soon. In the meantime if you ignore that message and downgrade from a legacy plan to Free then you will retain access to your private repositories.
- freyfogle 6y ago
  thanks for the fast and reassuring answer, I appreciate it. I'll wait until that message goes away, I can't risk losing my private repos.
- disillusioned 6y ago
  Is the system supposed to be charging for outside collaborators on the Team plan still? The language makes it sound like those should be free now.

itamarst 6y ago

Why do you still have a contract with ICE?

thinkingemote 6y ago

> every developer on earth This now includes Iran, Syria, and Crimea. Bravo

yekanchi 6y ago
No, It doesn't

carapace 6y ago

> Existing customers will have their bills automatically reduced going forward. That is a class act right there. Now, if you would open source github... I kid. I have zero hope that that will ever happen. It has always been bizarre (IMO) that arguably the most popular open source dev forge, er, hub, is closed and proprietary. But what can you do? Remember when all those FOSS devs sent an open letter to github whining about that and begging for attention? https://github.com/dear-github/dear-github https://github.com/dear-github/dear-github (Ironically, they "signed" it by filling out a Google docs spreadsheet! As opposed to, say, patching a file.) Utterly bizarre. And now they have done it again, apparently because GitHub serves ICE: https://github.com/drop-ice/dear-github-2.0 https://github.com/drop-ice/dear-github-2.0 They "call upon GitHub to: Immediately cancel your contract with ICE ; Commit yourself to a higher ethical standard with all of your business dealings ..." [in writing]. But they stop short of threatening to leave if GitHub doesn't comply with their demands. Leaving aside the politics of ICE, and the strangeness of talking to "GitHub" like it's a single person, it seems to me that without taking some action (like moving to e.g. Srht or self-hosting a DVCS hub) that this is just posturing. Anyway, congratulations on sucking more air out of the room of FOSS development. In the words of the aforementioned, undersigned, concerned peasants, excuse me! users, of GitHub: > We still believe in GitHub as a platform, as a place to help the open source community make the world a genuinely better place. Please, step up and join us.

znpy 6y ago

Will there ever be an OSS version of GitHub, a la Gitlab?

aschatten 6y ago

This great news, I appreciate the free stuff, but on the other hand free stuff can be tricky as the company must make money. So I hope that your enterprise model will work.

mato 6y ago

Hi Nat. Just to clarify, do these pricing changes imply that users without a paid plan will no longer receive any e-mail support from GitHub? Speaking as a long-time user, over the last 10(?) years I've only ever needed to reach out to support@ twice or so, both times with fairly obscure issues that were promptly dealt with -- thank you. It'd be a shame if the implied change to "community support only" for free accounts means that free users no longer have any direct way to contact support.

Lucasoato 6y ago

Hi Nat, first of all thanks from every developer in the world. I think this is going to be a great step forward for people who don't need enterprise features (yet). One question: is this service going to be available in countries that are currently hit by US sanctions? (eg. Iran) Thanks again

bamboozled 6y ago

Excuse me for being cynical, but I read this announcement as: “Because nothing is truly free, we will be selling your data to pay for this new seemingly free service.” If this is what you’re doing, if the privacy policy changes, I’ll be very disappointed. How will this be funded? We’re customers actually against paying a small free to use the service?

colinloretz 6y ago
Read his comment again. They are supporting the free plans with Github Enterprise. > We've wanted to make this change for the last 18 months, but needed our Enterprise business to be big enough to enable the free use of GitHub by the rest of the world. I'm happy to say that it's grown dramatically in the last year, and so we're able to make GitHub free for teams that don't need Enterprise features.
- bamboozled 6y ago
  Being an SRE who’s worked for a lot of different companies, I can tell you building and hosting something like GitHub is expensive, it seems unreal to me they’re selling enough self hosted solutions to pay for everything and keep GitHub profitable.
  - yani 6y ago
    Business and first class on planes pays for the trip. Economy can be free.
deleted 6y ago
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batmenace 6y ago
Not sure how that's your takeaway from the announcement? Sounds more like they can cover the costs of hosting free plans from the revenue through enterprise customers, and so can attrack more customers without having to charge them

maa5444 6y ago

it looks uncle Bill after the #shitstorm... wants to give some charms away ... enjoy lads ... I ll not

jpomykala 6y ago

Hey how about introducing a function to create a branches from issues

zapttt 6y ago

nice play. rigth out of Microsoft playbook. in a time where competiton is triving and github is not synonymous of opensource anymore, offer free stuff to embrace (fake you still support opensource), extend (offer cpu time), extinguish (kill the budding competition before they can establish themselves) I guess you asked for a question, so here is one: which of these true open source supporters are you more afraid of: gitlab? codeberg? others we should know about? thank you!

vertis 6y ago

Hi nat, I came here prepared to ask about how this would play out for annual billing customers since I only just set it up in March. On searching, I can't actually find where you charged me, so I suspect you might have pre-empted this. So instead of a question, this is more thank you. I'm a tiny bootstrapped startup and was only using 3 of the 5 previously minimum seats. I'm a prime beneficiary of this change, and look forward (fingers crossed) to being one of the enterprise customers that pays for everyone else :D For others, can you elaborate on how this will work for current annual billing customers, I found some vague references but no detail. Thank you

pookeh 6y ago
Came here to ask the same thing. I literally set up Teams @ $25/month for 2 seats only and paid in full for annual... How does this price change affect me? Also, has the number of minutes for Actions gone down from 10k to 2k monthly?

ss3000 6y ago

Can you explain what happened to Atom development? I've seen numerous posts noting the sharp decline in contribution soon after the acquisition was announced. https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22601451 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=22601451 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21142934 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21142934 Without an official explanation, given the timing, it'd be reasonable to assume you pulled development resources away from it, the exact thing you actually went on Reddit to claim you wouldn't do: https://www.reddit.com/r/AMA/comments/8pc8mf/im_nat_friedman_future_ceo_of_github_ama/e0a2b2e/ https://www.reddit.com/r/AMA/comments/8pc8mf/im_nat_friedman... P.S. I've observed that these kinds of posts tend to turn into a place where people shit on Atom in favor of _insert preferred other editor here_. Feel free to do that here too, but just note that I'm not going to be obliged to engage since it's completely orthogonal to the topic at hand. I think any remaining Atom users at this point are likely already painfully aware that Atom has long since lost the war in developer mindshare, but don't let that stop you from pouring salt on the wound.

spiderfarmer 6y ago
I gave up on Atom this month because of the lack of development. Too bad really.
- poutrathor 6y ago
  I gave up on Atom when it was released because it was the most slow editor I have ever seen. It single handy bias me against Electron app until I discover VSCode.
  - seumars 6y ago
    VSCode is electron-based.
    - maattdd 6y ago
      This is precisely what he is saying.
  - 6y ago

tomerbd 6y ago

Introducing pomodoro technique into the tasks would be great.

Keats 6y ago

Can making Github Actions share code between them be a super high priority? Copy/pasting all the setup for a project on each action is repetitive and any time you need to make a change, you need to make it in 6-7 places in our case.

TheRealPomax 6y ago

Forgive the skeptic in me: from the outside, it looks like MS is pushing GH to copy features that people use GitLab for right now - how much of this is "we're going to move into GL's space" vs. "this is our own thing"? (because I'm sure MS wouldn't mind if GL's IPO went less than swimmingly because GH duplicated a number of their selling points "for free" ("for now"))

wackget 6y ago

Are you aware that GitHub users still can't sort their repositories into folders? Because that's definitely one reason why some developers still don't use GitHub. Take a look at this request which has been open for years and remains unfulfilled: https://github.com/dear-github/dear-github/issues/74 https://github.com/dear-github/dear-github/issues/74 Is there a reason that such incredibly basic functionality doesn't exist on GitHub but does on all your competitors' offerings?