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>Here at GitHub, we're big fans of open source, When will GitHub be open sourced?

by ksk 12y ago

Xylakant 12y ago
I'd downvote you twice if I could. Open Source is not and never was about not making money and it was never about giving away what makes the core of your business. Github shares a lot of code and projects that are useful to the open source community [1] and at the same time provides a free service that is tremendously useful for a lot of open source projects. I feel like they're doing their part of sharing, attacking them because they're a profitable company is just cheap. [1] see https://github.com/github https://github.com/github, https://github.com/libgit2/libgit2 https://github.com/libgit2/libgit2
- adrusi 12y ago
  Licensing their entire infrastructure would probably not impact their profit. There are already very capable competitors to Github, the also-proprietary Bitbucket, and the Free Gitlab most notably. It's not so much their technology that keeps them the market leader, their tech isn't really anything special (not saying it's poor quality or trivial). It's their network momentum that makes them the perennial favorite. If they released their entire source code under GPLv3 and started accepting pull requests, they would almost certainly be fine. Bitbucket couldn't make much use of their code unless Atlassian followed suit and released their source under the terms of GPLv3 as well. They also of course sell a self-hosted version of github to enterprise customers, who now could give them the finger and just build the application from source, but if they wanted to do that, they would just use Gitlab. The enterprise customers are paying for the support package that comes with the software. Free software isn't about not making money. It is about "giving away" the core of your business. Not because we want to run ourselves out of business, but because we have an ethical obligation to preserve our users' freedoms to run the software however they want, to study and modify its implementation, and to redistribute it regardless of whether it was modified. Or at least many of use believe we do. Part of the reason the GPL exists is to help your users without endangering your business.
  - sytse 12y ago
    Thanks for mentioning GitLab! Giving away the core of your business is harder than giving away the fringes. At GitLab we would love to have only one free version. But we need an open-core business model (with a proprietary Enterprise Edition) so that the enterprises pay for licensing. Making money only on support is very hard, especially when you ship a stable and easy-to-use product.
    - mikekchar 12y ago
      Please don't take this as criticism, because I don't mean it that way. I just want to point out the possibility that the situation you find yourself in is based on your choices, not necessarily on an inability to create a free software business model. I have not looked at GitLab specifically, if the following does not apply to how you do business, then I apologize. But for interest sake, consider the following. Most software companies work on a "push" based model. They have BAs/PGMs who decide what work needs to be done, make plans and get development in motion. The developers implement the features and after a certain period of time, the features are finished. The business then sells licenses to the software based on the features that exist in the product. In this kind of business model, you have many problems. First, you have a fairly large up front investment which you need to recover. The initial software development is paid for by the company and you need to find someone who is willing to reimburse those costs. Selling support is untenable because if the product requires a lot of support (meaning that the cost of the support contract is worth it), nobody will use the product. So instead the company must restrict the use of the product to paying customers. In this system, the no-cost, open source version is a loss leader that brings new customers. Such a system may actually be antithetical to free software developers because there is a huge incentive for the company to introduce vendor lock-in so as to push people to the paying version. However, "push" models are not the only model you could use for development. While they are comparatively rare, "pull" models also exist. In a "pull" model, you avoid doing work unless someone pays you to do it. While it might be bug fixes, it is more likely features. Organizations are willing to pay for specific features because they get a defined benefit for an single up front cost. As long as there are several customers who are willing to pay for development, the cost is shared across those customers. In such a system, it is the company's actions rather than their IP which is valuable. In fact it would be detrimental to restrict people from getting access to all the features because you lose potential customers. Also in such an environment, it is very important that nobody makes a proprietary version of the software to unfairly compete with you, so licenses like the GPL are incredibly useful. As I said, examples of this type of model are few and far between. It is unfortunate because I think there is a lot of potential. If you got this far and are interested in one example of a successful "pull" model business, I highly recommend reading: http://www.oreilly.com/openbook/opensources/book/tiemans.html http://www.oreilly.com/openbook/opensources/book/tiemans.htm... Cygnus was eventually acquired by Red Hat for about $700 million in Red Hat stock. I can't find numbers to back this up, but from memory I believe they had sales of over $100 million per quarter at the time (the best place to look for how Cygnus impacted Red Had after the acquisition is to look at the quarterly reports from the year 2000 on). I hope that proves interesting. Whether or not GitLab could transition to such a business model is obviously a different question. It is a completely different way of doing business and I don't think you could just tell people to change overnight. However, if you are really serious about exploring options for moving to a more free software oriented approach, I hope the above offers some clues for how to start.
- ksk 12y ago
  Your absurd and patently false assumptions about me convinced me to not give a substantive reply to a dishonest person like you.
wongarsu 12y ago
I don't think it's good to downvote you for asking an interesting question. Github seems to really like open source, they just don't feel they can afford to open source their core product. That's a valid decision. I think nobody can honestly say that Github isn't helping the open source community.
- ksk 12y ago
  Unfortunately, downvoting dissenting ideas/questions/opinions has become pretty much the norm on HN. Anyway, our positions are not far off. I don't see the world as black and white. I can see the benefits of GitHub. It just struck me as odd that a software company that makes money from its proprietary software would say they're 'big fans' of open source since a major part of open source is the open source development model. I guess I have a different idea in mind when I hear "we're great fans of X" than others. /shrug

>Here at GitHub, we're big fans of open source, When will GitHub be open sourced?

by ksk 12y ago

>Here at GitHub, we're big fans of open source, When will GitHub be open sourced?

I'd downvote you twice if I could. Open Source is not and never was about not making money and it was never about giving away what makes the core of your business. Github shares a lot of code and projects that are useful to the open source community [1] and at the same time provides a free service that is tremendously useful for a lot of open source projects. I feel like they're doing their part of sharing, attacking them because they're a profitable company is just cheap. [1] see https://github.com/github https://github.com/github, https://github.com/libgit2/libgit2 https://github.com/libgit2/libgit2

adrusi 12y ago
Licensing their entire infrastructure would probably not impact their profit. There are already very capable competitors to Github, the also-proprietary Bitbucket, and the Free Gitlab most notably. It's not so much their technology that keeps them the market leader, their tech isn't really anything special (not saying it's poor quality or trivial). It's their network momentum that makes them the perennial favorite. If they released their entire source code under GPLv3 and started accepting pull requests, they would almost certainly be fine. Bitbucket couldn't make much use of their code unless Atlassian followed suit and released their source under the terms of GPLv3 as well. They also of course sell a self-hosted version of github to enterprise customers, who now could give them the finger and just build the application from source, but if they wanted to do that, they would just use Gitlab. The enterprise customers are paying for the support package that comes with the software. Free software isn't about not making money. It is about "giving away" the core of your business. Not because we want to run ourselves out of business, but because we have an ethical obligation to preserve our users' freedoms to run the software however they want, to study and modify its implementation, and to redistribute it regardless of whether it was modified. Or at least many of use believe we do. Part of the reason the GPL exists is to help your users without endangering your business.
- sytse 12y ago
  Thanks for mentioning GitLab! Giving away the core of your business is harder than giving away the fringes. At GitLab we would love to have only one free version. But we need an open-core business model (with a proprietary Enterprise Edition) so that the enterprises pay for licensing. Making money only on support is very hard, especially when you ship a stable and easy-to-use product.
  - mikekchar 12y ago
    Please don't take this as criticism, because I don't mean it that way. I just want to point out the possibility that the situation you find yourself in is based on your choices, not necessarily on an inability to create a free software business model. I have not looked at GitLab specifically, if the following does not apply to how you do business, then I apologize. But for interest sake, consider the following. Most software companies work on a "push" based model. They have BAs/PGMs who decide what work needs to be done, make plans and get development in motion. The developers implement the features and after a certain period of time, the features are finished. The business then sells licenses to the software based on the features that exist in the product. In this kind of business model, you have many problems. First, you have a fairly large up front investment which you need to recover. The initial software development is paid for by the company and you need to find someone who is willing to reimburse those costs. Selling support is untenable because if the product requires a lot of support (meaning that the cost of the support contract is worth it), nobody will use the product. So instead the company must restrict the use of the product to paying customers. In this system, the no-cost, open source version is a loss leader that brings new customers. Such a system may actually be antithetical to free software developers because there is a huge incentive for the company to introduce vendor lock-in so as to push people to the paying version. However, "push" models are not the only model you could use for development. While they are comparatively rare, "pull" models also exist. In a "pull" model, you avoid doing work unless someone pays you to do it. While it might be bug fixes, it is more likely features. Organizations are willing to pay for specific features because they get a defined benefit for an single up front cost. As long as there are several customers who are willing to pay for development, the cost is shared across those customers. In such a system, it is the company's actions rather than their IP which is valuable. In fact it would be detrimental to restrict people from getting access to all the features because you lose potential customers. Also in such an environment, it is very important that nobody makes a proprietary version of the software to unfairly compete with you, so licenses like the GPL are incredibly useful. As I said, examples of this type of model are few and far between. It is unfortunate because I think there is a lot of potential. If you got this far and are interested in one example of a successful "pull" model business, I highly recommend reading: http://www.oreilly.com/openbook/opensources/book/tiemans.html http://www.oreilly.com/openbook/opensources/book/tiemans.htm... Cygnus was eventually acquired by Red Hat for about $700 million in Red Hat stock. I can't find numbers to back this up, but from memory I believe they had sales of over $100 million per quarter at the time (the best place to look for how Cygnus impacted Red Had after the acquisition is to look at the quarterly reports from the year 2000 on). I hope that proves interesting. Whether or not GitLab could transition to such a business model is obviously a different question. It is a completely different way of doing business and I don't think you could just tell people to change overnight. However, if you are really serious about exploring options for moving to a more free software oriented approach, I hope the above offers some clues for how to start.
ksk 12y ago
Your absurd and patently false assumptions about me convinced me to not give a substantive reply to a dishonest person like you.

wongarsu 12y ago

I don't think it's good to downvote you for asking an interesting question. Github seems to really like open source, they just don't feel they can afford to open source their core product. That's a valid decision. I think nobody can honestly say that Github isn't helping the open source community.

ksk 12y ago
Unfortunately, downvoting dissenting ideas/questions/opinions has become pretty much the norm on HN. Anyway, our positions are not far off. I don't see the world as black and white. I can see the benefits of GitHub. It just struck me as odd that a software company that makes money from its proprietary software would say they're 'big fans' of open source since a major part of open source is the open source development model. I guess I have a different idea in mind when I hear "we're great fans of X" than others. /shrug