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It's not uncommon for small businesses and contractors to have 30+ repositories, each of which are very small. It doesn't mean they have more money than god, t

by watty 15y ago

It's not uncommon for small businesses and contractors to have 30+ repositories, each of which are very small. It doesn't mean they have more money than god, they're being screwed by the pricing model. We switched to a different host that allows 10 "active" repositories and unlimited archived. In other words, Github is worse off because they are losing business by failing to create a viable plan for all audiences. Edit: Of course we could purchase their most expensive plan and live happily (but broke). My point was that their pricing model works well for most companies but not for contractors or small businesses with many small projects.

tptacek 15y ago
You can literally install a fully private instance of Github on your own network for less than the cost of a laptop per person†. That is the absolute most expensive option Github offers, we took it, and we don't feel remotely "screwed". This whole thread is a perfect illustration of why HN is a terrible place to get pricing advice. Salary is the gating cost factor for software companies. For things that actually work and actually improve the working day, it is simply not worth dickering over things that cost tiny fractions of what fully loaded headcount costs. Now, it's absolutely true that not everything that costs $Enterprise/yr really works or improves lives, and you can't go shouldering these costs willy-nilly. But some things clearly are worth it. For a lot of companies, Github is one of those things. If it's not worth that much for you, Github isn't screwing you. They simply aren't selling to you. Go somewhere else. But think about not hurling epithets at them, just because they aren't catering to people who derive less value from them than their core customers. † (Depending on how often you refresh laptops; we do it a lot.)
- MostAwesomeDude 15y ago
  If you are able to do this kind of infrastructure work, there are literally multiple git managers which are free (libre and gratis!) and just as powerful for developers. My employer, OSUOSL, deploys an internal gitolite and we do just fine.
  - bostonvaulter2 15y ago
    Gitolite only does a tiny fraction of what github offers. The two really aren't directly comparable. Gitolite is purely a code hosting system, github allows you to collaborate, view code with an awesome viewer, make comments and much more.
mnutt 15y ago
Now that I think of it, it would actually be pretty easy to write a github-archive tool that would clone a repo, compress it, push to s3, then delete from github using the API. It could even do the reverse, as well.
apsurd 15y ago
At first glance it would seem like github is "leaving money on the table". But if Patrick is right then their time is better spent strategizing maximum value from the high end rather than devote time to getting your $10 dollars. 30+ repos in your case would be the Gold plan @ $100.00 a month. How much do you think is fair? If you have 30 client repos per month please tell me you are charging more per client than the $40 dollars it's going to take to host the project in github for a year. And if you aren't making money hand over fist with these hundreds of apps people are apparently creating and hosting on github .... make them public. I have 13 repos in github, all public. Most of them are all attempts at commercial products. Nobody gives two peanuts about my code.
ZachPruckowski 15y ago
Obviously I can't speak to your financial situation, but a year's worth of GitHub Gold is about a man-week of overhead from an entry level person, so if it makes one person 2% faster (or two people 1% faster) then it's worth it.

by watty 15y ago

tptacek 15y ago

You can literally install a fully private instance of Github on your own network for less than the cost of a laptop per person†. That is the absolute most expensive option Github offers, we took it, and we don't feel remotely "screwed". This whole thread is a perfect illustration of why HN is a terrible place to get pricing advice. Salary is the gating cost factor for software companies. For things that actually work and actually improve the working day, it is simply not worth dickering over things that cost tiny fractions of what fully loaded headcount costs. Now, it's absolutely true that not everything that costs $Enterprise/yr really works or improves lives, and you can't go shouldering these costs willy-nilly. But some things clearly are worth it. For a lot of companies, Github is one of those things. If it's not worth that much for you, Github isn't screwing you. They simply aren't selling to you. Go somewhere else. But think about not hurling epithets at them, just because they aren't catering to people who derive less value from them than their core customers. † (Depending on how often you refresh laptops; we do it a lot.)

MostAwesomeDude 15y ago
If you are able to do this kind of infrastructure work, there are literally multiple git managers which are free (libre and gratis!) and just as powerful for developers. My employer, OSUOSL, deploys an internal gitolite and we do just fine.
- bostonvaulter2 15y ago
  Gitolite only does a tiny fraction of what github offers. The two really aren't directly comparable. Gitolite is purely a code hosting system, github allows you to collaborate, view code with an awesome viewer, make comments and much more.

mnutt 15y ago

Now that I think of it, it would actually be pretty easy to write a github-archive tool that would clone a repo, compress it, push to s3, then delete from github using the API. It could even do the reverse, as well.

apsurd 15y ago

At first glance it would seem like github is "leaving money on the table". But if Patrick is right then their time is better spent strategizing maximum value from the high end rather than devote time to getting your $10 dollars. 30+ repos in your case would be the Gold plan @ $100.00 a month. How much do you think is fair? If you have 30 client repos per month please tell me you are charging more per client than the $40 dollars it's going to take to host the project in github for a year. And if you aren't making money hand over fist with these hundreds of apps people are apparently creating and hosting on github .... make them public. I have 13 repos in github, all public. Most of them are all attempts at commercial products. Nobody gives two peanuts about my code.

ZachPruckowski 15y ago

Obviously I can't speak to your financial situation, but a year's worth of GitHub Gold is about a man-week of overhead from an entry level person, so if it makes one person 2% faster (or two people 1% faster) then it's worth it.