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I think one of the underappreciated point of github is its excellent business model. The freemium model of providing everything for free if your code is public

I think one of the underappreciated point of github is its excellent business model. The freemium model of providing everything for free if your code is public and charging only for private repositories allowed them to grow exponentially with rising popularity among open source projects. Sourceforge and Google code tried to cater only for open source projects, while never thinking that code hosting is the problem that needs to be solved.

jldugger 12y ago
IMO, Google's problem is that many enterprise customers believe they need on-premise, and realistically, Google cannot deliver on-premise solutions of systems designed to work on their Google scale platforms. I mean, that google search appliance seems like a reverse engineering / wikileaks dream. 'Here's a box accesses internal customer documents, and nobody knows how to upgrade'.
jbigelow76 12y ago
I wish Sourceforge would have come to that realization. Anytime I search for something that tends to be older enterprisy-ish code and it shows up in Sourceforge (iText for example) I can never figure out what the hell is and isn't an ad. If I didn't know better I would suspect a malware vendor purchased it and turned it into a honeypot for lazy devs.
- saintgimp 12y ago
  Yes, this, a thousand times yes. The transparently-malicious abuse of ads on SourceForge is a tragedy and it's been that way for years and years. It is a honeypot for lazy people (or those without meticulous attention to detail) and the malware venders didn't even have to purchase the site. SourceForge just rolled over and let them do it.
- eevilspock 12y ago
  Dalton Caldwell, who once worked at SourceForge, blames the ad-supported business model as the underlying reason Sourceforge sucked[1]. The users were the product and the real customers were the advertisers no matter how much he and his coworkers wanted to believe otherwise. He credits GitHub's straight up reliance on just user revenue as the key to the quality of their product. We've all been duped into thinking that ads give us things for free. Sourceforge and all other ad-supported sites are not only not free, they are costing us more than if we just paid[2]. We users neec to hear Maciej Cegłowski[3] exhortation, "Don't Be a Free User"[4]. I can't wait for the day when more people realize that entire web is being held hostage by advertising and a web without ads would be to today's web what GitHub is to Sourceforge. [1] http://daltoncaldwell.com/an-audacious-proposal http://daltoncaldwell.com/an-audacious-proposal [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8585237 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8585237 [3] https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=idlewords https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=idlewords [4] https://blog.pinboard.in/2011/12/don_t_be_a_free_user/ https://blog.pinboard.in/2011/12/don_t_be_a_free_user/
  - jsprogrammer 12y ago
    Is there a reason/ability to pay Github if all your work is open source (ie. no private repos)?
    - dasil003 12y ago
      There's certainly no reason to, but the brilliance of the model is that you repay open source generosity in kind with a killer tool. Naturally open source developers also tend to have day jobs, and then which commercial option do you think they'll be pushing for in all those companies? Of course it only works because the product is brilliant, and the product is only brilliant because it was created by open source developers scratching their own itch. I don't think the lessons really apply to the wider web.
DannyBee 12y ago
"Sourceforge and Google code tried to cater only for open source projects, while never thinking that code hosting is the problem that needs to be solved. " Actually, Google didn't care at the time. We weren't catering, Google Code required you be an open source project to use it. It literally was not trying to solve this problem, because it did not want to. We knew commercial code hosting was a problem to be solved, we just didn't care :)
- proksoup 12y ago
  Yeah, focus is good. Glad to see you're happy about not caring.
- adanto6840 12y ago
  Have to respect that. At the same time though, competition is great -- plenty of me wishes you guys had tried to compete via a paid offering, one which may have lasted longer or even have been profitable. And, as a paid offering, potentially brought in some revenue and therefore maybe also had more funding/staff/effort/polish/etc. Provide choice at the very least... And, even still, maybe Github or similar would have been better -- but I can't help but think that more competition would have resulted in a better outcome [for everyone] than a product shutdown...
jusben1369 12y ago
My understanding is that GitHub makes the majority of its revenue by selling on premise versions. So there's another layer/level to the genius of their business model.
- walterbell 12y ago
  Do they have a sizable enterprise sales force, or is cloud-hosted github a sufficient demand generator of inbound sales?
  - jusben1369 12y ago
    Great question! I believe it's both. Cloud hosted becomes the lead gen and they've had to build a team to manage that deal flow. I don't think they're doing any cold outbound though.
eridius 12y ago
Is it actually a good business model, though? My understanding is GitHub is not profitable, and relies on VC funding to keep operating. At this point it seems like it will never be profitable unless they find some other significant source of income (as there's no reason to believe that there's hordes of companies out there just waiting to start paying GitHub for private repos). What's going to happen when the VC funding dries up?
- chrismorgan 12y ago
  In August 2010: https://signalvnoise.com/posts/2486-bootstrapped-profitable-proud-github https://signalvnoise.com/posts/2486-bootstrapped-profitable-.... That might imply that at that time at least GitHub was profitable? I have no knowledge one way or another.
  - eridius 12y ago
    GitHub took VC funding in 2012. $100M from Andreessen Horowitz and SV Angel. I have no direct knowledge about their revenue stream, but profitable companies don't usually seek VC funding, and I've heard from other people (who may or may not actually know what they're talking about) that they're not profitable and are relying on the VC funding to operate. And they're certainly spending money like it's not their own. Check out their ridiculous office: https://customspaces.com/office/DhXb6EKlE9/github-office-san-francisco/ https://customspaces.com/office/DhXb6EKlE9/github-office-san.... And that bar. That's "we're spending VC money" behavior, not "we're spending our own revenue" behavior.
    - e98cuenc 12y ago
      Their offices are not that different from Google's por AirBnB's, which are definitely profitable. Taking VC's money is usually a sign of a company that wants to grow faster or want something else the VC may bring to the table (connections, expertise, ...) I have no idea if they are profitable or not, but your comment seems to be based entirely on heresay.
- slgeorge 12y ago
pmelendez 12y ago
> " The freemium model of providing everything for free if your code is public " I actually prefer Bitbucket model of free private repos for tiny groups. I found myself with a lot of repos that I don't want to share until they are in a minimum quality state.
- manojlds 12y ago
  That model of Bitbucket came up AFTER Github established itself.
  - oneweekwonder 12y ago
    True, and I also find it BETTER. It actually came when Atlassian bought out BitBucket[1]. I personally believe GitHub success is founded on git "winning" the DVCS wars, but I won't downplay the fact that they contributed to this. [1]: http://techcrunch.com/2010/09/29/atlassian-buys-mercurial-project-hosting-site-bitbucket/ http://techcrunch.com/2010/09/29/atlassian-buys-mercurial-pr...
    - notfoss 12y ago
      True, and I also find it BETTER. It actually came when Atlassian bought out BitBucket[1]. Wow, I never knew that. I thought Atlassian created BitBucket. Thanks for the link.
    - twic 12y ago
      I think GitHub's role in the DVCS war is huge. Git got an early lead thanks to Linus Torvalds, but it was GitHub that let it ultimately steamroller Mercurial and the also-rans. GitHub was the war-winner because of Metcalfe's law - as soon as it had a 40% advantage in numbers, it had a two-fold advantage in value, and from there there was no going back from there.
mgkimsal 12y ago
SF had an "enterprise" version for running in-house, but IIRC it was fairly expensive. I seem to recall $10k+ when I tried to price it out in 2001. Totally not worth it for a small shop. Free tools like gforge sprang up as replacements, but were just as clunky to use, if not moreso, and were rather difficult to install.

jldugger 12y ago

IMO, Google's problem is that many enterprise customers believe they need on-premise, and realistically, Google cannot deliver on-premise solutions of systems designed to work on their Google scale platforms. I mean, that google search appliance seems like a reverse engineering / wikileaks dream. 'Here's a box accesses internal customer documents, and nobody knows how to upgrade'.

jbigelow76 12y ago

I wish Sourceforge would have come to that realization. Anytime I search for something that tends to be older enterprisy-ish code and it shows up in Sourceforge (iText for example) I can never figure out what the hell is and isn't an ad. If I didn't know better I would suspect a malware vendor purchased it and turned it into a honeypot for lazy devs.

saintgimp 12y ago
Yes, this, a thousand times yes. The transparently-malicious abuse of ads on SourceForge is a tragedy and it's been that way for years and years. It is a honeypot for lazy people (or those without meticulous attention to detail) and the malware venders didn't even have to purchase the site. SourceForge just rolled over and let them do it.
eevilspock 12y ago
Dalton Caldwell, who once worked at SourceForge, blames the ad-supported business model as the underlying reason Sourceforge sucked[1]. The users were the product and the real customers were the advertisers no matter how much he and his coworkers wanted to believe otherwise. He credits GitHub's straight up reliance on just user revenue as the key to the quality of their product. We've all been duped into thinking that ads give us things for free. Sourceforge and all other ad-supported sites are not only not free, they are costing us more than if we just paid[2]. We users neec to hear Maciej Cegłowski[3] exhortation, "Don't Be a Free User"[4]. I can't wait for the day when more people realize that entire web is being held hostage by advertising and a web without ads would be to today's web what GitHub is to Sourceforge. [1] http://daltoncaldwell.com/an-audacious-proposal http://daltoncaldwell.com/an-audacious-proposal [2] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8585237 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=8585237 [3] https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=idlewords https://news.ycombinator.com/user?id=idlewords [4] https://blog.pinboard.in/2011/12/don_t_be_a_free_user/ https://blog.pinboard.in/2011/12/don_t_be_a_free_user/
- jsprogrammer 12y ago
  Is there a reason/ability to pay Github if all your work is open source (ie. no private repos)?
  - dasil003 12y ago
    There's certainly no reason to, but the brilliance of the model is that you repay open source generosity in kind with a killer tool. Naturally open source developers also tend to have day jobs, and then which commercial option do you think they'll be pushing for in all those companies? Of course it only works because the product is brilliant, and the product is only brilliant because it was created by open source developers scratching their own itch. I don't think the lessons really apply to the wider web.

DannyBee 12y ago

"Sourceforge and Google code tried to cater only for open source projects, while never thinking that code hosting is the problem that needs to be solved. " Actually, Google didn't care at the time. We weren't catering, Google Code required you be an open source project to use it. It literally was not trying to solve this problem, because it did not want to. We knew commercial code hosting was a problem to be solved, we just didn't care :)

proksoup 12y ago
Yeah, focus is good. Glad to see you're happy about not caring.
adanto6840 12y ago
Have to respect that. At the same time though, competition is great -- plenty of me wishes you guys had tried to compete via a paid offering, one which may have lasted longer or even have been profitable. And, as a paid offering, potentially brought in some revenue and therefore maybe also had more funding/staff/effort/polish/etc. Provide choice at the very least... And, even still, maybe Github or similar would have been better -- but I can't help but think that more competition would have resulted in a better outcome [for everyone] than a product shutdown...

jusben1369 12y ago

My understanding is that GitHub makes the majority of its revenue by selling on premise versions. So there's another layer/level to the genius of their business model.

walterbell 12y ago
Do they have a sizable enterprise sales force, or is cloud-hosted github a sufficient demand generator of inbound sales?
- jusben1369 12y ago
  Great question! I believe it's both. Cloud hosted becomes the lead gen and they've had to build a team to manage that deal flow. I don't think they're doing any cold outbound though.

eridius 12y ago

Is it actually a good business model, though? My understanding is GitHub is not profitable, and relies on VC funding to keep operating. At this point it seems like it will never be profitable unless they find some other significant source of income (as there's no reason to believe that there's hordes of companies out there just waiting to start paying GitHub for private repos). What's going to happen when the VC funding dries up?

chrismorgan 12y ago
In August 2010: https://signalvnoise.com/posts/2486-bootstrapped-profitable-proud-github https://signalvnoise.com/posts/2486-bootstrapped-profitable-.... That might imply that at that time at least GitHub was profitable? I have no knowledge one way or another.
- eridius 12y ago
  GitHub took VC funding in 2012. $100M from Andreessen Horowitz and SV Angel. I have no direct knowledge about their revenue stream, but profitable companies don't usually seek VC funding, and I've heard from other people (who may or may not actually know what they're talking about) that they're not profitable and are relying on the VC funding to operate. And they're certainly spending money like it's not their own. Check out their ridiculous office: https://customspaces.com/office/DhXb6EKlE9/github-office-san-francisco/ https://customspaces.com/office/DhXb6EKlE9/github-office-san.... And that bar. That's "we're spending VC money" behavior, not "we're spending our own revenue" behavior.
  - e98cuenc 12y ago
    Their offices are not that different from Google's por AirBnB's, which are definitely profitable. Taking VC's money is usually a sign of a company that wants to grow faster or want something else the VC may bring to the table (connections, expertise, ...) I have no idea if they are profitable or not, but your comment seems to be based entirely on heresay.
slgeorge 12y ago

pmelendez 12y ago

> " The freemium model of providing everything for free if your code is public " I actually prefer Bitbucket model of free private repos for tiny groups. I found myself with a lot of repos that I don't want to share until they are in a minimum quality state.

manojlds 12y ago
That model of Bitbucket came up AFTER Github established itself.
- oneweekwonder 12y ago
  True, and I also find it BETTER. It actually came when Atlassian bought out BitBucket[1]. I personally believe GitHub success is founded on git "winning" the DVCS wars, but I won't downplay the fact that they contributed to this. [1]: http://techcrunch.com/2010/09/29/atlassian-buys-mercurial-project-hosting-site-bitbucket/ http://techcrunch.com/2010/09/29/atlassian-buys-mercurial-pr...
  - notfoss 12y ago
    True, and I also find it BETTER. It actually came when Atlassian bought out BitBucket[1]. Wow, I never knew that. I thought Atlassian created BitBucket. Thanks for the link.
  - twic 12y ago
    I think GitHub's role in the DVCS war is huge. Git got an early lead thanks to Linus Torvalds, but it was GitHub that let it ultimately steamroller Mercurial and the also-rans. GitHub was the war-winner because of Metcalfe's law - as soon as it had a 40% advantage in numbers, it had a two-fold advantage in value, and from there there was no going back from there.

mgkimsal 12y ago

SF had an "enterprise" version for running in-house, but IIRC it was fairly expensive. I seem to recall $10k+ when I tried to price it out in 2001. Totally not worth it for a small shop. Free tools like gforge sprang up as replacements, but were just as clunky to use, if not moreso, and were rather difficult to install.