4 ms·

Why does it take $17m to beat Git? How will you ever get the network effects needed to get sustained users with a commercial tool? Given Git was created becau

by MBCook 6mo ago

Why does it take $17m to beat Git? How will you ever get the network effects needed to get sustained users with a commercial tool? Given Git was created because BitKeeper, a commercial tool, pulled their permission for kernel developers to use their tool aren’t we ignoring a lesson there?

im_down_w_otp 6mo ago
Apparently it takes $17M and a whole team full of people to do what one guy with a chip on his shoulder could do for free.
- bee_rider 6mo ago
  On one hand that’s true. On the other, the “one guy” there is, like, the guy who does impressive projects “just as a hobby.”
  - reverius42 6mo ago
    Yeah, it's really burying the lede to call Linus Torvalds "one guy with a chip on his shoulder". "Why fund $17M towards development of an operating system, when Linux was made by one guy with a chip on his shoulder?"
    - Orygin 6mo ago
      While he's technically excellent (or so it seems on the outside) he's still just, like, a guy
      - paradox460 6mo ago
        Zaphod iz just zis guy, you know
- irjustin 6mo ago
  I'm not sure if I should take these comments seriously or as a joke...
- Defletter 6mo ago
  Uhh, to be fair, if the goal was only to recreate git from 2005, it probably wouldn't cost $17M. I'd hazard a guess that they're recreating modern git and the emergent stuff like issues, PRs, projects, etc. I've also heard that the core devs for git are essentially paid a salary to maintain git.
  - philipwhiuk 6mo ago
    They're not though, they're using Git internally.
- altmanaltman 6mo ago
  Literally true if it's that one guy you're talking about. Also, you should hear Linus talk about building git himself, what he built wasn't what you know as git today. It didn't even have the commands like git pull, git commit etc until he handed development over.
- lamasery 6mo ago
  I'd be 1,000x more interested in a project with the official git maintainers' buy-in to leverage the alleged power of LLM development to bring all git's features into libgit2 (or whatever, but that's a starting point) and switch git itself over to using that as its backend. I've twice in my career found reasons that git being (officially; I have no interest in dealing with another implementation with its own missing features and distinct bugs) a library instead of a messy ball of scripts and disparate binaries, would have saved me tons and tons of time. You can look at the stories of how Github was designed and built, or look at the architectures of other similar software, and see folks struggling with the same issue. You'll run into frustration on this front pretty much instantly if you try to build tooling around Git, which turns out to be such a useful thing to do that I've ended up doing it twice in ~15 years without particularly looking for reasons to. (While we're at it, how about some kind of an officially-blessed lib-rsync with a really pleasant API?)
ergocoder 6mo ago
Linus built git in 8 days or something.
- grogenaut 6mo ago
  Nah, on the 7th day he rested... On the 8th he apologized for his behavior having learned the error of his ways. On the ninth he roasted some fool.
  - sph 6mo ago
    I wish we had old Linus back just one day to review some vibecoded patch to Linux. I’d love to hear him rant about it.
- dvdyzag 6mo ago
  In a cave, with a box of scraps!
- materielle 6mo ago
  No he didn’t. He built a proof of concept demo in 7 days then handed it off to other maintainers to code for real. I’m not sure why this myth keeps getting repeated. Linus himself clarifies this in every interview about git. His main contributions were his ideas. 1) The distributed model, that doesn’t need to dial the internet. 2) The core data structures. For instance, how git stores snapshots for files changes in a commit. Other tools used diff approaches which made rewinding, branch switching, and diffing super slow. Those two ideas are important and influenced git deeply, but he didn’t code the thing, and definitely not in 7 days!
  - globular-toast 6mo ago
    He did what needed to be done. Linux similarly has thousands of contributors and Linus's personal "code contribution" is almost negligible these days. But code doesn't matter. Literally anyone can generate thousands of lines of code that will flip bits all day long. What matters is some combination of the following: a vision, respect from peers earned with technical brilliance, audaciousness, tenacity, energy, dedication etc. This is what makes Linus special. Not his ability to bash on a keyboard all day long.
Ekaros 6mo ago
Thinking it for bit it comes to "what comes after Git" and what does "Git" mean there. To build better tool than git, probably a few months by tiny team of good developers. Just thinking of problem and making what is needed... So either free time or few hundred thousand at max. On other hand to replace GitHub. Endless millions will be spend... For some sort of probable gains? It might even make money in long run... But goal is probably to flip it.

by MBCook 6mo ago

im_down_w_otp 6mo ago

Apparently it takes $17M and a whole team full of people to do what one guy with a chip on his shoulder could do for free.

bee_rider 6mo ago
On one hand that’s true. On the other, the “one guy” there is, like, the guy who does impressive projects “just as a hobby.”
- reverius42 6mo ago
  Yeah, it's really burying the lede to call Linus Torvalds "one guy with a chip on his shoulder". "Why fund $17M towards development of an operating system, when Linux was made by one guy with a chip on his shoulder?"
  - Orygin 6mo ago
    While he's technically excellent (or so it seems on the outside) he's still just, like, a guy
    - paradox460 6mo ago
      Zaphod iz just zis guy, you know
irjustin 6mo ago
I'm not sure if I should take these comments seriously or as a joke...
Defletter 6mo ago
Uhh, to be fair, if the goal was only to recreate git from 2005, it probably wouldn't cost $17M. I'd hazard a guess that they're recreating modern git and the emergent stuff like issues, PRs, projects, etc. I've also heard that the core devs for git are essentially paid a salary to maintain git.
- philipwhiuk 6mo ago
  They're not though, they're using Git internally.
altmanaltman 6mo ago
Literally true if it's that one guy you're talking about. Also, you should hear Linus talk about building git himself, what he built wasn't what you know as git today. It didn't even have the commands like git pull, git commit etc until he handed development over.
lamasery 6mo ago
I'd be 1,000x more interested in a project with the official git maintainers' buy-in to leverage the alleged power of LLM development to bring all git's features into libgit2 (or whatever, but that's a starting point) and switch git itself over to using that as its backend. I've twice in my career found reasons that git being (officially; I have no interest in dealing with another implementation with its own missing features and distinct bugs) a library instead of a messy ball of scripts and disparate binaries, would have saved me tons and tons of time. You can look at the stories of how Github was designed and built, or look at the architectures of other similar software, and see folks struggling with the same issue. You'll run into frustration on this front pretty much instantly if you try to build tooling around Git, which turns out to be such a useful thing to do that I've ended up doing it twice in ~15 years without particularly looking for reasons to. (While we're at it, how about some kind of an officially-blessed lib-rsync with a really pleasant API?)

ergocoder 6mo ago

Linus built git in 8 days or something.

grogenaut 6mo ago
Nah, on the 7th day he rested... On the 8th he apologized for his behavior having learned the error of his ways. On the ninth he roasted some fool.
- sph 6mo ago
  I wish we had old Linus back just one day to review some vibecoded patch to Linux. I’d love to hear him rant about it.
dvdyzag 6mo ago
In a cave, with a box of scraps!
materielle 6mo ago
No he didn’t. He built a proof of concept demo in 7 days then handed it off to other maintainers to code for real. I’m not sure why this myth keeps getting repeated. Linus himself clarifies this in every interview about git. His main contributions were his ideas. 1) The distributed model, that doesn’t need to dial the internet. 2) The core data structures. For instance, how git stores snapshots for files changes in a commit. Other tools used diff approaches which made rewinding, branch switching, and diffing super slow. Those two ideas are important and influenced git deeply, but he didn’t code the thing, and definitely not in 7 days!
- globular-toast 6mo ago
  He did what needed to be done. Linux similarly has thousands of contributors and Linus's personal "code contribution" is almost negligible these days. But code doesn't matter. Literally anyone can generate thousands of lines of code that will flip bits all day long. What matters is some combination of the following: a vision, respect from peers earned with technical brilliance, audaciousness, tenacity, energy, dedication etc. This is what makes Linus special. Not his ability to bash on a keyboard all day long.

Ekaros 6mo ago

Thinking it for bit it comes to "what comes after Git" and what does "Git" mean there. To build better tool than git, probably a few months by tiny team of good developers. Just thinking of problem and making what is needed... So either free time or few hundred thousand at max. On other hand to replace GitHub. Endless millions will be spend... For some sort of probable gains? It might even make money in long run... But goal is probably to flip it.