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Anonymous users are potential future customers. Too much friction and they will leave and never convert. Also network effects of those users since GitHub is no

Anonymous users are potential future customers. Too much friction and they will leave and never convert. Also network effects of those users since GitHub is not just a git repo host but a social media and community for code. I think product needs to strike the right balance of free and paid features to maximize their profits.

spoiler 3y ago
Right, I kinda see that point, but I'm also not sure how I feel about the code search issue. On one hand, I agree that it makes the user experience nicer and can aid conversion, but on the other it's easy to abuse the feature (in a few ways off the top my head). Some of the things you highlighted (ie the social network effects) are best experienced when logged in, and other than "just" browsing, there's not much in interaction for logged out users already (can't host code, open issues, comment, star, etc). I think allowing people to browse code and its history, alongside other parts of the platform for logged out users already feels pretty open to me