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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 p

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
      > You can see that there's a lot of overlap and that these offers cover very broad sections of the industry. True, but that applies as much to their $200k figure. > This gives students the opportunity to explore and develop immediately employable skillsets without impacting their already limited budgets. The stuff that's worth using has free or cheaper alternatives anyway.
      - kyawzazaw 6y ago
        As a student, I am hoping the company that I will work for later will pay for it. At the same time, I am also aware of free and cheaper alternatives for some of the options there.
  - oaiey 6y ago
    And you only use a subset. And your employer is typically very happy to pay money for productivity. For sure this is to the benefit of the involved companies. But paying for good tooling is normal not strange. When you go to your local handyman he will tell you a lot about good and expensive tools.
    - Nullabillity 6y ago
      > And your employer is typically very happy to pay money for productivity. And that's money that's not going to better equipment. Or your salary. Or whatever else that it could be spent on that would have a far bigger effect. > But paying for good tooling is normal not strange. Paying for bad tooling is normal. Good tooling tends to come as a consequence of trying to solve something else. Bad tooling also tends to be much more expensive to produce, because it's so prone to scope creep. Visual Studio had to build their own Docker wrapper, because telling people to just use it directly would give their users a glimpse of the outside world, and we can't have that! > When you go to your local handyman he will tell you a lot about good and expensive tools. The vital difference is that physical tools are expensive to duplicate and maintain. You can't distribute a hammer via BitTorrent.
      - zaat 6y ago
        > Visual Studio had to build their own Docker wrapper, because telling people to just use it directly would give their users a glimpse of the outside world, and we can't have that! Do you actually believe this was the reason behind developing Docker wrapper for VS? I mean you can always try stretching out the worst intention and motives, but do you actually believe this? Suppose you do, how do you think about the gazillion 3rd party open source extensions to VS code? Did Red Hat develop OpenShift extension because they are part of the conspiracy too? Do you think that this is part of course change due to the IBM acquisition? >The vital difference is that physical tools are expensive to duplicate and maintain. You can't distribute a hammer via BitTorrent. The fact that you can distribute software for nearly free doesn't make the cost of producing it to be cheaper than hammer.
        6y ago

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
    > You can see that there's a lot of overlap and that these offers cover very broad sections of the industry. True, but that applies as much to their $200k figure. > This gives students the opportunity to explore and develop immediately employable skillsets without impacting their already limited budgets. The stuff that's worth using has free or cheaper alternatives anyway.
    - kyawzazaw 6y ago
      As a student, I am hoping the company that I will work for later will pay for it. At the same time, I am also aware of free and cheaper alternatives for some of the options there.
- oaiey 6y ago
  And you only use a subset. And your employer is typically very happy to pay money for productivity. For sure this is to the benefit of the involved companies. But paying for good tooling is normal not strange. When you go to your local handyman he will tell you a lot about good and expensive tools.
  - Nullabillity 6y ago
    > And your employer is typically very happy to pay money for productivity. And that's money that's not going to better equipment. Or your salary. Or whatever else that it could be spent on that would have a far bigger effect. > But paying for good tooling is normal not strange. Paying for bad tooling is normal. Good tooling tends to come as a consequence of trying to solve something else. Bad tooling also tends to be much more expensive to produce, because it's so prone to scope creep. Visual Studio had to build their own Docker wrapper, because telling people to just use it directly would give their users a glimpse of the outside world, and we can't have that! > When you go to your local handyman he will tell you a lot about good and expensive tools. The vital difference is that physical tools are expensive to duplicate and maintain. You can't distribute a hammer via BitTorrent.
    - zaat 6y ago
      > Visual Studio had to build their own Docker wrapper, because telling people to just use it directly would give their users a glimpse of the outside world, and we can't have that! Do you actually believe this was the reason behind developing Docker wrapper for VS? I mean you can always try stretching out the worst intention and motives, but do you actually believe this? Suppose you do, how do you think about the gazillion 3rd party open source extensions to VS code? Did Red Hat develop OpenShift extension because they are part of the conspiracy too? Do you think that this is part of course change due to the IBM acquisition? >The vital difference is that physical tools are expensive to duplicate and maintain. You can't distribute a hammer via BitTorrent. The fact that you can distribute software for nearly free doesn't make the cost of producing it to be cheaper than hammer.
      - 6y ago