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The funny thing about these "reasons" the article writes, is that it does not give any reason why GitHub would want to create such an app store. Most the reason
by ROARosen 6y ago
The funny thing about these "reasons" the article writes, is that it does not give any reason why GitHub would want to create such an app store. Most the reasons stated are basically what we will supposedly benefit. There is literally no reason from GitHub's point of view why they would be interested in creating such a product to begin with.
Of course, there might be reasons form Microsoft to create an alternative to the App Stores say for a gaming marketplace etc. But specifically for GitHub I cannot see why they would be interested in the overhead.
- Irishsteve 6y agoIt would be interesting for GitHub because they have a large developer community who push to these app stores already, so they have the dev audience, just not the consumer. They charge said developers a few dollars a month per seat. GitHub could somehow instead be taking a 0%-20% cut topline revenue from some of the apps they host. Lots of work to make that happen the upside might make it worth while.
- vagrantJin 6y agoThe devs are the consumers. So it can be a niche store? I dont know what a normal person would be doing on github.
- Irishsteve 6y agoWhat I meant is - GitHub could create a Google Play store. The supply side (Devs) are on GitHub in abundance, so they could have a big catalog. If GitHub could somehow solve the demand side (Phone users) they'd be sorted.
- freeone3000 6y agoIt's a large pile of open source software. It's able to be redistributed freely, by design. Everyone is in the position to take advantage of the catalog, if they can somehow solve the demand side -- that's what the entire problem of a store is about. F-Droid has been trying for years!
- Irishsteve 6y agoCompanies host their private code in private repos. I’m not saying it’s the best thing for GitHub to do, but... Let’s say 15% of Android top 1000 apps are sitting in private repos on GitHub. With their build tools GitHub make it possible to automatically push builds to this imaginary store, they offer devs 50% discount on whatever cut google take if on the play store.
- ROARosen 6y agoYou're right, but you don't need to be GitHub for that. Any dev can create an app that integrates with GH, or any other source control service for that matter.
- mulmen 6y agoAnd you can’t see the problem with creating a situation where Microsoft is in direct competition with all the ways you can already deploy this code? That light at the end of this tunnel is an oncoming train. Not freedom.
- dolmen 6y agoGreat. I will just have to click on "Fork" to make a scam.
- treis 6y agoIt also ignores the question of how: Apple - Blocked Android - Pointless without a drop in replacement for Google Services. Windows- This is possible, but Windows doesn't really have a distribution problem. There's no real need here. Linux - Again possible, but no real need
- sudosysgen 6y agoTo note though, running Android everyday without GMS is very doable, both MicroG and Huawei do it.
- john_alan 6y agoWhy would "Apple" be blocked? You can run arbitrary software on macOS.
- curryst 6y agoGitHub is no longer just a source code management company. They've started their horizontal integration, and are firmly in the more general "Developer Tools" category. This would be another addition to their horizontal integration, and increasing the amount of the development pipeline they're involved in. The specific advantage is that it makes switching providers really hard. You develop in Atom, store the code in GitHub, use GitHub Actions for CI/CD (if that's viable, I'm not super familiar with the product), use GitHub to manage the released artifacts, and publish them to GitHub's app store. That makes it really appealing to buy because you don't have to talk to 7 different vendors and duct tape their solutions together with Python scripts. You talk to 1 vendor, who gives you all the pieces, and the pieces are already able to communicate natively. It makes it really appealing to sell because once you buy in, it's really hard to get back out. Imagine trying to replace all of those components, and the developer time you lose as people get used to the new systems and how they all work together. Bonus points if you can only publish to the GitHub app store from GitHub installations. GitLab can do a lot of those things, but they don't have an app store. As others pointed out though, it would compete with Microsoft's existing app store. I would not be terribly surprised to see some kind of integration between GitHub and MS's app store, or Azure and their app store though.