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How does github make money? I read the article but it's only a couple of paragraphs. Github seems to be mostly personal and open source projects. With good rea

How does github make money? I read the article but it's only a couple of paragraphs. Github seems to be mostly personal and open source projects. With good reason since it's trival to set up a git server yourself and so you'd only want to put up stuff that you want public-facing. But it's not so trivial to set up the web ui in git server and so I could see some value there (not sure if $2B of value though) I used github at a company but only for some code that we wanted to share outside of our company. And if we had to pay for it we never would have used github since we could have spent a 1/2 day setting up a public-facing git server. We would never have used it for our internal code - again, it's trivial to maintain your own git server and it would also be irresponsible of us to put our internal code on a public-facing server. So... what makes them valued at 2B? Do they have any revenue at all? Maybe they can hook up with linkedin?

jMyles 11y ago
They have a paid tier, the primary feature of which is private repos.
aaronbrethorst 11y ago
> How does github make money? GitHub Enterprise[1]. > And if we had to pay for it we never would have. I think you're the exception. [1] And private repos, but I'd imagine that 80%+ of their revenue comes from on-premise enterprise deployments.
- comrade1 11y ago
  Does it really make sense to put your company's intellectual property on another company's servers?
  - timClicks 11y ago
    Sure. Many companies use Gmail, for example. The risk/reward payoff is different for every company, and there are many who will outsource the hosting of much of their IP because the alternative is often a hindrance to companies who want to ship their core product.
  - stock_toaster 11y ago
    Github Enterprise[1] is a bundled on-premises offering (virtual machine you host yourself). Atlassian has a somewhat similar offering named Stash[2] (I am not particularly a fan of Stash personally though). [1]: https://enterprise.github.com/home https://enterprise.github.com/home [2]: https://www.atlassian.com/software/stash/ https://www.atlassian.com/software/stash/
    - dubcanada 11y ago
      Also gitlab is basically a copy of github and more fully featured then stash.
      - icefox 11y ago
        I must say that the fact that Stash still doesn't have WebHooks is embarrassing. We had to write a custom hook in their weird java plugin system to get a part of this screen that GitLab has. https://about.gitlab.com/images/feature_page/webhooks_full.png https://about.gitlab.com/images/feature_page/webhooks_full.p... But still all three GitLab, Stash and GitHub have horrible permission capabilities. Looks like GitLab might be the "best" with what they have http://doc.gitlab.com/ee/permissions/permissions.html http://doc.gitlab.com/ee/permissions/permissions.html, but that is still pretty poor. A simple example would be the requirement to only allow a single user the ability to create tags, that user being the build bot. Enterprise's of course have all sorts of unique permission models that they want to abide by and most of them could be supported out of the box with a more fine grain model.
        sytse 11y ago
        GitLab CEO here, thanks for mentioning GitLab. I think a 'tag-only' user is an interesting idea. What do you use these build tags for?
        icefox 11y ago
        A build tag can be used to rapidly go from a commit to a binary and from a deployment to a sha in cases where the build attribute isn't the sha, but a number or version. There are many other permission uses cases such as fine grain create and delete branch permissions. Only the release users should be allowed to create release/* branches. No one should be allowed to delete the 'master' branch. There are projects where I want to give developer access, but they are not allowed to create or delete any branch, they can only push new changes that are "finished". If they want to make a in progress branch they need to do it somewhere else.
  - zachrose 11y ago
    ^^on-premise^^ means they give you a VM and you run it on your servers.
  - tracker1 11y ago
    You mean like AWS, Azure, Rackspace, DigitalOcean, Linode...? Many already run their code, most of it very easily reverse-engineered, or in scripted languages already available on another company's servers. It's expensive to get dedicated high speed connections and run data centers... this is just one more tool. In the case of Github, source control is their primary business... Their lead-in is free to open-source, and this builds a lot of good will. Not to mention that Github Enterprise is a pretty nice project... if they come around to add better traditional project management support, I think it will be one of the best options around. It's extremely easy to setup a private git server (Linux + SSH + Git), but the extra tooling and visibility they offer to non-programmers is what sells. Not to mention very transparent tooling with Go and NPM. I know that some people prefer Bitbucket because they have free private repositories too... but my concern there is what is their business model in the end? Github has a simple, effective business model and strategy that works. The good will in the open-source community (from gh-pages, to easy forking/sharing/pull-requests) has made them the first choice for most (at least newer) open source projects at this point. This brings loyalty, so when you job needs to host private repositories, it's only natural to use the same platform you're already interacting with. This is a pretty significant impact. The only down side, is their dedicated clients, and tooling that is geared only towards their platform. I don't like lock in, and while I don't think that is their intent, it will lead down that path for some. I also find that GUI tooling for Git in general is kind of crappy, though it's hard to carry the flexibility git offers in a GUI while making the most common workflows straight forward. Dealing in a very small team with few branches working mostly against master is much different than several large teams working on a codebase with many branches/conflicts in play.
    - comrade1 11y ago
      So Github gives their product away to people that don't have enough money to host on their own secure servers, and... what else? Where do they make their money? It seems from the comments here that their enterprise market is trivial.
      - tracker1 11y ago
        They make money both from business accounts and from github enterprise... the actual resource costs for hosting the open-source projects is relatively small... The costs for just the business accounts, not including enterprise, for private repositories probably covers their actual costs. As a business strategy, Enterprise software has plenty of room for a profit margin. As it stands, they have mindshare and are probably actually breaking even, or making at least a modest profit. This funding round is probably more about flushing out their enterprise offerings, so they are better in terms of competing with alternatives, or even bringing in better bridge/migration support. I've seen/used Jira, TFS, SVN and plenty of other systems that integrate project management and source control. There's definitely room for much better tooling here, and Github is in a better position than most to take over this space.
chx 11y ago
Github Enterprise certainly makes money. How much I do not know.
bliti 11y ago
There is no logical explanation for the valuation. It's pure especulation.
- elwell 11y ago
  Speculation is based on logic.
  - bliti 11y ago
    Could you explain further?
npkarnik 11y ago
Github Enterprise. Turns out that maintaining a git server and the familiar and great (imo) UI is something that medium-large companies generally have no interest in doing in-house and will gladly pay for.
vonklaus 11y ago
Github is about $25 a month, which is probably worth it for any organization vs. the cost and engineering resources to maintain a redundant and available git server. Sure it is pretty trivial, but so is paying $25 monthly. Also, if you are a small organization you could pay as little as 7 to have a private repo. https://github.com/pricing https://github.com/pricing
- comrade1 11y ago
  But why would you put your IP on another company's servers? I guess if the value of your company was something other than your code then it would make sense.
  - hn_user2 11y ago
    There is a ton of application code out there. Not super secret IP involving a secret new method to compress audio. It's mostly CRUD applications with some business logic mixed in. Nobody is trying to steal your CRUD code. Edit: just to clarify. I don't mean your crud code specifically. Just crud code in general. Maybe you specifically have some super amazing IP to guard.
    - elwell 11y ago
      > super secret IP involving a secret new method to compress audio Pied Piper?
  - pbreit 11y ago
    That ship sailed about a decode ago. And I know you probably think IP/code is a company's most valuable asset but for most companies that's not even close. A company's most valuable asset is how it goes about delighting customers.
    - comrade1 11y ago
      So, no competition doing competitive analysis?
drstewart 11y ago
I don't understand why McDonald's is valued at $100b. Personally, I don't eat hamburgers, so they get no money from me. After all, it's irresponsible to eat junk food. So I have to ask, do they even have revenue at all? How are they still in existence?
- comrade1 11y ago
  McDonalds has a huge amount of revenue! Are you kidding us?
  - connor4312 11y ago
    Whoosh.
    - comrade1 11y ago
      I asked about revenue. His ironic comment completely missed the point.
  - alaskamiller 11y ago
    He's satirizing your comment. The idea being that just because you don't find inherent value in something doesn't exclude others from finding their own value and additionally triviality doesn't necessary preclude others from claiming value.
    - comrade1 11y ago
      It's the argument of a two-year-old. I asked about revenue, not about personal value.
- spdy 11y ago
  If i remember correctly the biggest asset of McD is property they own.
stock_toaster 11y ago
> So... what makes them valued at 2B? Do they have any > revenue at all? Maybe they can hook up with linkedin? It has been speculated[1] that certain companies/endeavors derive some part of their value from the fact that VC firms and other investors view them as a "force multiplier" for _other_ startups. They have some amount of value simply as being an integral part of the overall software/startup ecosystem, and investors may want to keep a good things going. Further, investors may desire to keep Github from being acquired by some larger company with a different agenda. Investing at a high valuation may result in a lower likelihood of an acquisition. Certainly Github would qualify, if that is the case. [1]: http://words.steveklabnik.com/is-npm-worth-26mm http://words.steveklabnik.com/is-npm-worth-26mm

jMyles 11y ago

They have a paid tier, the primary feature of which is private repos.

aaronbrethorst 11y ago

> How does github make money? GitHub Enterprise[1]. > And if we had to pay for it we never would have. I think you're the exception. [1] And private repos, but I'd imagine that 80%+ of their revenue comes from on-premise enterprise deployments.

comrade1 11y ago
Does it really make sense to put your company's intellectual property on another company's servers?
- timClicks 11y ago
  Sure. Many companies use Gmail, for example. The risk/reward payoff is different for every company, and there are many who will outsource the hosting of much of their IP because the alternative is often a hindrance to companies who want to ship their core product.
- stock_toaster 11y ago
  Github Enterprise[1] is a bundled on-premises offering (virtual machine you host yourself). Atlassian has a somewhat similar offering named Stash[2] (I am not particularly a fan of Stash personally though). [1]: https://enterprise.github.com/home https://enterprise.github.com/home [2]: https://www.atlassian.com/software/stash/ https://www.atlassian.com/software/stash/
  - dubcanada 11y ago
    Also gitlab is basically a copy of github and more fully featured then stash.
    - icefox 11y ago
      I must say that the fact that Stash still doesn't have WebHooks is embarrassing. We had to write a custom hook in their weird java plugin system to get a part of this screen that GitLab has. https://about.gitlab.com/images/feature_page/webhooks_full.png https://about.gitlab.com/images/feature_page/webhooks_full.p... But still all three GitLab, Stash and GitHub have horrible permission capabilities. Looks like GitLab might be the "best" with what they have http://doc.gitlab.com/ee/permissions/permissions.html http://doc.gitlab.com/ee/permissions/permissions.html, but that is still pretty poor. A simple example would be the requirement to only allow a single user the ability to create tags, that user being the build bot. Enterprise's of course have all sorts of unique permission models that they want to abide by and most of them could be supported out of the box with a more fine grain model.
      - sytse 11y ago
        GitLab CEO here, thanks for mentioning GitLab. I think a 'tag-only' user is an interesting idea. What do you use these build tags for?
        icefox 11y ago
        A build tag can be used to rapidly go from a commit to a binary and from a deployment to a sha in cases where the build attribute isn't the sha, but a number or version. There are many other permission uses cases such as fine grain create and delete branch permissions. Only the release users should be allowed to create release/* branches. No one should be allowed to delete the 'master' branch. There are projects where I want to give developer access, but they are not allowed to create or delete any branch, they can only push new changes that are "finished". If they want to make a in progress branch they need to do it somewhere else.
- zachrose 11y ago
  ^^on-premise^^ means they give you a VM and you run it on your servers.
- tracker1 11y ago
  You mean like AWS, Azure, Rackspace, DigitalOcean, Linode...? Many already run their code, most of it very easily reverse-engineered, or in scripted languages already available on another company's servers. It's expensive to get dedicated high speed connections and run data centers... this is just one more tool. In the case of Github, source control is their primary business... Their lead-in is free to open-source, and this builds a lot of good will. Not to mention that Github Enterprise is a pretty nice project... if they come around to add better traditional project management support, I think it will be one of the best options around. It's extremely easy to setup a private git server (Linux + SSH + Git), but the extra tooling and visibility they offer to non-programmers is what sells. Not to mention very transparent tooling with Go and NPM. I know that some people prefer Bitbucket because they have free private repositories too... but my concern there is what is their business model in the end? Github has a simple, effective business model and strategy that works. The good will in the open-source community (from gh-pages, to easy forking/sharing/pull-requests) has made them the first choice for most (at least newer) open source projects at this point. This brings loyalty, so when you job needs to host private repositories, it's only natural to use the same platform you're already interacting with. This is a pretty significant impact. The only down side, is their dedicated clients, and tooling that is geared only towards their platform. I don't like lock in, and while I don't think that is their intent, it will lead down that path for some. I also find that GUI tooling for Git in general is kind of crappy, though it's hard to carry the flexibility git offers in a GUI while making the most common workflows straight forward. Dealing in a very small team with few branches working mostly against master is much different than several large teams working on a codebase with many branches/conflicts in play.
  - comrade1 11y ago
    So Github gives their product away to people that don't have enough money to host on their own secure servers, and... what else? Where do they make their money? It seems from the comments here that their enterprise market is trivial.
    - tracker1 11y ago
      They make money both from business accounts and from github enterprise... the actual resource costs for hosting the open-source projects is relatively small... The costs for just the business accounts, not including enterprise, for private repositories probably covers their actual costs. As a business strategy, Enterprise software has plenty of room for a profit margin. As it stands, they have mindshare and are probably actually breaking even, or making at least a modest profit. This funding round is probably more about flushing out their enterprise offerings, so they are better in terms of competing with alternatives, or even bringing in better bridge/migration support. I've seen/used Jira, TFS, SVN and plenty of other systems that integrate project management and source control. There's definitely room for much better tooling here, and Github is in a better position than most to take over this space.

chx 11y ago

Github Enterprise certainly makes money. How much I do not know.

bliti 11y ago

There is no logical explanation for the valuation. It's pure especulation.

elwell 11y ago
Speculation is based on logic.
- bliti 11y ago
  Could you explain further?

npkarnik 11y ago

Github Enterprise. Turns out that maintaining a git server and the familiar and great (imo) UI is something that medium-large companies generally have no interest in doing in-house and will gladly pay for.

vonklaus 11y ago

Github is about $25 a month, which is probably worth it for any organization vs. the cost and engineering resources to maintain a redundant and available git server. Sure it is pretty trivial, but so is paying $25 monthly. Also, if you are a small organization you could pay as little as 7 to have a private repo. https://github.com/pricing https://github.com/pricing

comrade1 11y ago
But why would you put your IP on another company's servers? I guess if the value of your company was something other than your code then it would make sense.
- hn_user2 11y ago
  There is a ton of application code out there. Not super secret IP involving a secret new method to compress audio. It's mostly CRUD applications with some business logic mixed in. Nobody is trying to steal your CRUD code. Edit: just to clarify. I don't mean your crud code specifically. Just crud code in general. Maybe you specifically have some super amazing IP to guard.
  - elwell 11y ago
    > super secret IP involving a secret new method to compress audio Pied Piper?
- pbreit 11y ago
  That ship sailed about a decode ago. And I know you probably think IP/code is a company's most valuable asset but for most companies that's not even close. A company's most valuable asset is how it goes about delighting customers.
  - comrade1 11y ago
    So, no competition doing competitive analysis?

drstewart 11y ago

I don't understand why McDonald's is valued at $100b. Personally, I don't eat hamburgers, so they get no money from me. After all, it's irresponsible to eat junk food. So I have to ask, do they even have revenue at all? How are they still in existence?

comrade1 11y ago
McDonalds has a huge amount of revenue! Are you kidding us?
- connor4312 11y ago
  Whoosh.
  - comrade1 11y ago
    I asked about revenue. His ironic comment completely missed the point.
- alaskamiller 11y ago
  He's satirizing your comment. The idea being that just because you don't find inherent value in something doesn't exclude others from finding their own value and additionally triviality doesn't necessary preclude others from claiming value.
  - comrade1 11y ago
    It's the argument of a two-year-old. I asked about revenue, not about personal value.
spdy 11y ago
If i remember correctly the biggest asset of McD is property they own.

stock_toaster 11y ago

> So... what makes them valued at 2B? Do they have any > revenue at all? Maybe they can hook up with linkedin? It has been speculated[1] that certain companies/endeavors derive some part of their value from the fact that VC firms and other investors view them as a "force multiplier" for _other_ startups. They have some amount of value simply as being an integral part of the overall software/startup ecosystem, and investors may want to keep a good things going. Further, investors may desire to keep Github from being acquired by some larger company with a different agenda. Investing at a high valuation may result in a lower likelihood of an acquisition. Certainly Github would qualify, if that is the case. [1]: http://words.steveklabnik.com/is-npm-worth-26mm http://words.steveklabnik.com/is-npm-worth-26mm