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The question is how long the free party at github actions will last. That must be a considerable drain for github's Microsoft internal budget. I predict that w

by nn3 6y ago

The question is how long the free party at github actions will last. That must be a considerable drain for github's Microsoft internal budget. I predict that will eventually end too as they aim towards profitability.

LASR 6y ago
Considering they spent over half a billion dollars on Marketing spend for Windows Phone 7, I think they can afford to support some CI actions for OSS. Really it’s marketing spend for them to establish themselves as OSS-friendly. Nadella is just getting a lot more for the money than Ballmer did.
alexeldeib 6y ago
Think of it more as part of a suite and it makes sense: host your code on GitHub, use actions to deploy them, and deploy them to Azure. Make up money on 2 from 1 and 3. Google cloudbuild has a free tier too. Looks like AWS Codebuild has a comparable free tier too (do people use that?) (MS employee, not anything related to this though).
littlecranky67 6y ago
Don't forget that providing the service for free to open source projects brings in money as open source developers in their younger years (school, college, university) tend to be low on budget, but are likely to use something they already know when they start to work for companies later on in their career.
merijnv 6y ago
> I predict that will eventually end too as they aim towards profitability. Honestly, I don't really think so. I think MS's goal for GitHub is to be a "loss leader" to keep developer mindshare. They lost a lot of developer mindshare to linux, open source, etc. in the migration to the web and cloud. Providing GitHub and CI for free to open source/students is a great way to keep developer mindshare. Make sure it's nicely integrate into Azure cloud for deployment and devops and you have a streamlined pipeline of leading large numbers of developers to your cloud platform.
- nojvek 6y ago
  AFAIK GitHub isn’t losing money. They have a ton of enterprise users and that’s where the big money is. I could be wrong since they don’t publish the numbers. I wish GitHub IPOd and remained independent. Not a huge fan of Trillion dollar corps gulping everything that threatens them.

by nn3 6y ago

LASR 6y ago

Considering they spent over half a billion dollars on Marketing spend for Windows Phone 7, I think they can afford to support some CI actions for OSS. Really it’s marketing spend for them to establish themselves as OSS-friendly. Nadella is just getting a lot more for the money than Ballmer did.

alexeldeib 6y ago

Think of it more as part of a suite and it makes sense: host your code on GitHub, use actions to deploy them, and deploy them to Azure. Make up money on 2 from 1 and 3. Google cloudbuild has a free tier too. Looks like AWS Codebuild has a comparable free tier too (do people use that?) (MS employee, not anything related to this though).

littlecranky67 6y ago

Don't forget that providing the service for free to open source projects brings in money as open source developers in their younger years (school, college, university) tend to be low on budget, but are likely to use something they already know when they start to work for companies later on in their career.

merijnv 6y ago

> I predict that will eventually end too as they aim towards profitability. Honestly, I don't really think so. I think MS's goal for GitHub is to be a "loss leader" to keep developer mindshare. They lost a lot of developer mindshare to linux, open source, etc. in the migration to the web and cloud. Providing GitHub and CI for free to open source/students is a great way to keep developer mindshare. Make sure it's nicely integrate into Azure cloud for deployment and devops and you have a streamlined pipeline of leading large numbers of developers to your cloud platform.

nojvek 6y ago
AFAIK GitHub isn’t losing money. They have a ton of enterprise users and that’s where the big money is. I could be wrong since they don’t publish the numbers. I wish GitHub IPOd and remained independent. Not a huge fan of Trillion dollar corps gulping everything that threatens them.