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Judging by the commit logs I'm guessing there is at least 1 or 2 people working on Atom full-time. I'm surprised a company of GitHub's size can pull off what is

by Touche 12y ago

Judging by the commit logs I'm guessing there is at least 1 or 2 people working on Atom full-time. I'm surprised a company of GitHub's size can pull off what is essentially a skunk works project with no revenue potential and have people working on it full or near-full time and the investors are ok with that.

pbreit 12y ago
They raised at least $100m. An editor is probably the most important developer tool. Their basic service is free. I would imagine their investors (mainly a16z) would be delighted if they delivered a highly used programming editor.
jewel 12y ago
Github was bootstrapped from 2008 until finally taking $100M in 2012. I don't think they needed the money, so they probably got it on really good terms. I don't think the investors have much sway in daily affairs nor control of the board. Projects like this can have marketing or brand value far beyond the cost of two engineers. Also, it seems like parts of atom.io could eventually be integrated right into the github website.
saalaa 12y ago
> skunk works project with no revenue potential You just don't know about that. Github is a code hosting and project management (somewhat) company. They're building a tool that help teams write code that is then hosted on their product and it's based on web technologies. At some point, Github could pull a very pleasing workflow integration (in-browser or otherwise) and suddenly Atom would be very valuable to the company. If they could create the same sort of adoration we see for other editors (vim, emacs, sublime) it could also become an important reputation asset for the company. There are just so many ways this makes sense for them although, I agree, in terms of short term accounting there's nothing to see.
dragonwriter 12y ago
> I'm surprised a company of GitHub's size can pull off what is essentially a skunk works project with no revenue potential Since when do extensible editors around which IDEs can be built have no revenue potential? And that's before even considering synergies that an editor integrating workflows for other GitHub services might have.
- bdcravens 12y ago
  GitHub originally was going to charge for it, and then announced it would be free. Pretty sure they're locked into that decision or else it'll be bad PR.
  - dragonwriter 12y ago
    A free (even open-source) extensible editor that is also the foundation on which commercial IDEs are built (or for which there are first-party commercial extensions) isn't exactly an unheard-of business model.
    - bdcravens 12y ago
      Sure, see JetBrains and all their Eclipse-based IDEs. Facebook has already come out with an Atom-based IDE, and it won't be the last. I'm not sure that Github will be the one releasing a commercial one though. However, I think a base open source project with a upgraded commercial fine is fine (see Sidekiq)
samatman 12y ago
What if you never had to push to github? What if you could boot up your Chromebook and head over to your repo, work on it, do the push-to-deploy dance, and never edit a local copy? I'd hate it. But 2 full-time engineers? Yeah, that's eminently justifiable.
tommoor 12y ago
I reminds me of Google building Chrome... and that turned out okay :)

by Touche 12y ago

pbreit 12y ago

They raised at least $100m. An editor is probably the most important developer tool. Their basic service is free. I would imagine their investors (mainly a16z) would be delighted if they delivered a highly used programming editor.

jewel 12y ago

Github was bootstrapped from 2008 until finally taking $100M in 2012. I don't think they needed the money, so they probably got it on really good terms. I don't think the investors have much sway in daily affairs nor control of the board. Projects like this can have marketing or brand value far beyond the cost of two engineers. Also, it seems like parts of atom.io could eventually be integrated right into the github website.

saalaa 12y ago

> skunk works project with no revenue potential You just don't know about that. Github is a code hosting and project management (somewhat) company. They're building a tool that help teams write code that is then hosted on their product and it's based on web technologies. At some point, Github could pull a very pleasing workflow integration (in-browser or otherwise) and suddenly Atom would be very valuable to the company. If they could create the same sort of adoration we see for other editors (vim, emacs, sublime) it could also become an important reputation asset for the company. There are just so many ways this makes sense for them although, I agree, in terms of short term accounting there's nothing to see.

dragonwriter 12y ago

> I'm surprised a company of GitHub's size can pull off what is essentially a skunk works project with no revenue potential Since when do extensible editors around which IDEs can be built have no revenue potential? And that's before even considering synergies that an editor integrating workflows for other GitHub services might have.

bdcravens 12y ago
GitHub originally was going to charge for it, and then announced it would be free. Pretty sure they're locked into that decision or else it'll be bad PR.
- dragonwriter 12y ago
  A free (even open-source) extensible editor that is also the foundation on which commercial IDEs are built (or for which there are first-party commercial extensions) isn't exactly an unheard-of business model.
  - bdcravens 12y ago
    Sure, see JetBrains and all their Eclipse-based IDEs. Facebook has already come out with an Atom-based IDE, and it won't be the last. I'm not sure that Github will be the one releasing a commercial one though. However, I think a base open source project with a upgraded commercial fine is fine (see Sidekiq)

samatman 12y ago

What if you never had to push to github? What if you could boot up your Chromebook and head over to your repo, work on it, do the push-to-deploy dance, and never edit a local copy? I'd hate it. But 2 full-time engineers? Yeah, that's eminently justifiable.

tommoor 12y ago

I reminds me of Google building Chrome... and that turned out okay :)