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How might they do that given that Microsoft now owns all of the IP and GitHub is mostly closed source? It seems like a very different situation than the libera

How might they do that given that Microsoft now owns all of the IP and GitHub is mostly closed source? It seems like a very different situation than the liberally open source MySQL.

hackerman_fi 4y ago
Same way Gitlab and countless other services are built on top of Git, which is definitely not owned by MS :)
- yamtaddle 4y ago
  In my dream future, libgit2 is the official implementation of Git, taking most of the pain out of trying to create a Github-like service (among other things).
bombcar 4y ago
The problem is that what GitHub does is relatively reproducible (Gitlab, gitea, bitbucket? others do it) but the value GitHub provides is free hosting for so much content. Anyone can make an image hosting site, making one profitable long term is always the problem. For now, GitHub is winning because of the free side of their toolset.
- creshal 4y ago
  I'm fairly sure Microsoft doesn't even have the ambition to make it profitable. Like Youtube for Google, or costco hotdogs, it's to get a foot in the door (or rather, customers' feet in your doors) to upsell people on all your other products.
  - evancox100 4y ago
    Why do you think YouTube isn’t profitable? Plenty of ads in it and bringing in something like $15 bln/year in revenue. Don’t know exactly the COGS, etc., but hard to say they aren’t making money. Android is probably a much better example than YouTube.
    - sofixa 4y ago
      > Why do you think YouTube isn’t profitable? Plenty of ads in it and bringing in something like $15 bln/year in revenue The infrastructure to store and deliver seamlessly zettabytes of video all around the world surely doesn't come cheaply.
      - bombcar 4y ago
        For Google it probably comes about as cheap as it can for anyone, and based on a cursory search, the revenue YouTube makes minus the cost of paying the content creators and employees leaves (probably) enough for the datacenters and decent profit. Though Google is likely doing accounting shenanigans with cross-company billing and charges YouTube "just enough" for the datacenter/cloud access that, on paper, it's barely breaking even (if only for tax advantages). But I don't have proof of that.
    - lmm 4y ago
      YouTube was burning money for years. They might actually be making money now with the rise in memberships and superchats (and more aggressive ads), but it took what, ten years to get there?
      - creshal 4y ago
        Youtube was founded 15 years ago, and might, possibly be profitable now… but I still doubt it. Between the eternally escalating storage and bandwidth requirements, political pressure to involve more humans in content moderation keeps rising too.
- jorams 4y ago
  GitHub was a profitable bootstrapped business for 4 years before they decided to take a 100 million dollar investment and start bleeding money in pursuit of growth. Sourcehut is a profitable business even without requiring payment yet. The business model is not the problem. Network effects are.

How might they do that given that Microsoft now owns all of the IP and GitHub is mostly closed source? It seems like a very different situation than the liberally open source MySQL.

hackerman_fi 4y ago

Same way Gitlab and countless other services are built on top of Git, which is definitely not owned by MS :)

yamtaddle 4y ago
In my dream future, libgit2 is the official implementation of Git, taking most of the pain out of trying to create a Github-like service (among other things).

bombcar 4y ago

The problem is that what GitHub does is relatively reproducible (Gitlab, gitea, bitbucket? others do it) but the value GitHub provides is free hosting for so much content. Anyone can make an image hosting site, making one profitable long term is always the problem. For now, GitHub is winning because of the free side of their toolset.

creshal 4y ago
I'm fairly sure Microsoft doesn't even have the ambition to make it profitable. Like Youtube for Google, or costco hotdogs, it's to get a foot in the door (or rather, customers' feet in your doors) to upsell people on all your other products.
- evancox100 4y ago
  Why do you think YouTube isn’t profitable? Plenty of ads in it and bringing in something like $15 bln/year in revenue. Don’t know exactly the COGS, etc., but hard to say they aren’t making money. Android is probably a much better example than YouTube.
  - sofixa 4y ago
    > Why do you think YouTube isn’t profitable? Plenty of ads in it and bringing in something like $15 bln/year in revenue The infrastructure to store and deliver seamlessly zettabytes of video all around the world surely doesn't come cheaply.
    - bombcar 4y ago
      For Google it probably comes about as cheap as it can for anyone, and based on a cursory search, the revenue YouTube makes minus the cost of paying the content creators and employees leaves (probably) enough for the datacenters and decent profit. Though Google is likely doing accounting shenanigans with cross-company billing and charges YouTube "just enough" for the datacenter/cloud access that, on paper, it's barely breaking even (if only for tax advantages). But I don't have proof of that.
  - lmm 4y ago
    YouTube was burning money for years. They might actually be making money now with the rise in memberships and superchats (and more aggressive ads), but it took what, ten years to get there?
    - creshal 4y ago
      Youtube was founded 15 years ago, and might, possibly be profitable now… but I still doubt it. Between the eternally escalating storage and bandwidth requirements, political pressure to involve more humans in content moderation keeps rising too.
jorams 4y ago
GitHub was a profitable bootstrapped business for 4 years before they decided to take a 100 million dollar investment and start bleeding money in pursuit of growth. Sourcehut is a profitable business even without requiring payment yet. The business model is not the problem. Network effects are.