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GitHub lost $66M in nine months of 2016

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Re: GitHub lost $66M in nine months of 2016

#161

Post by gpm »

st3v3r wrote: post #143
Longhanks wrote: post #47

That and their open racism (see https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=11049067 ). Hopefully, they wake up soon enough and stop this bs .

I'm not seeing a shred of racism there. I'm seeing a white, straight male not being treated like he's special, and interpreting that as racism.

Read the article linked, some key quotes

> "it is very hard to even interview people who are 'white' which makes things challenging" - anonymous insider, presumably someone in a position to interview people

> "Some of the biggest barriers to progress are white women" - Lead of social impact team

> "This is not work for white folks to lead." - Slide in talk given by above lead

> "We need solidarity with our Asian friends and colleagues" - Same slide

(This one is especially odd, Asian's are over-represented in tech as a percentage of the population)

> "Some of the biggest barriers to progress are white women" - Same slide

> "don't think we'll succeed teaching white, male middle managers empathy and compassion any time soon [new paragraph] so let's limit their scope of damage" - Social impact team technical director via twitter

Re: GitHub lost $66M in nine months of 2016

#162

Post by hyperpallium »

ForHackernews wrote: post #123
bbcbasic wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> It was that conversation that made me realize how we've become accustomed to the quality and price of software that's been heavily subsidised by massive VC investments. Not to mention open source, sponsored by big companies, universities and passionate individual contributors. E.g. try and sell a compiler, a JS framework or an IDE.

This is one of several reasons why the GPL is a great license for FLOSS. You can GPL-license your software and contribute to the community, while offering alternative commercial licenses to companies that want them. If you use a totally-permissive BSD-style license, you're stuck trying to charge for a support contract or custom plugins or something.

I sold my software dual-licensed GPL, and a deal-breaker for me was how long it took companies to actually purchase. They had the software, used it, and so didn't have a compelling need to buy, right now.

Though they all did actually buy in the end, and there was enough income to live on, I found the uncertainty very distracting and not worth it.

Re: GitHub lost $66M in nine months of 2016

#163

Post by st3v3r »

dijit wrote: post #76
metaobject wrote: post #13

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"... who could replace them?" Im hoping it's a company run by women and minorities, just for your sake.

Lets be clear, I never implied that women and minorities can't do tech or are in any way inferior. But I'm not a fan of actively bringing bias into hiring. You're just being racist if you hire someone on the basis of them being a skin colour. I don't support racist organisations of any kind. If there is a company that happens to be funded and started by minorities and women is successful then that's fine, of course t…

>Lets be clear, I never implied that women and minorities can't do tech or are in any way inferior.

Let's be clear, that's exactly what you were implying.

>I don't support racist organisations of any kind.

This is an extremely huge stretch for you to make, just because they're trying not to favor white males.

>but when they're being vitriolic about people regarding race and gender I'm not pleased.

Like most of the anti-Github people in these comments are?

Re: GitHub lost $66M in nine months of 2016

#164

Post by cpeterso »

josho wrote: post #102

This is an example of how VCs distort the market for other businesses. I had a recent conversation with a prospect and they took issue with the price of our software. Our app is in a specialized industry (ie. a smaller market). We charge a per use fee of $35. This fee enables our customer to immediately earn nearly $200 (a 5x return with no risk to them). Despite the significant benefit and profitability of using the…

Maybe you're charging too little? Price is a signal of product value. The customer might be wary of getting an immediate 5x return on their $35 investment, thinking there is some trick in the value proposition. If your price matched their immediate return ($200?) then they might be more receptive because the value equation is balanced.

Re: GitHub lost $66M in nine months of 2016

#165

Post by matt4077 »

Taek wrote: post #134
annon wrote: post #96

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except as pointed out in the article, the massive increase in spending was fairly frivolous. They spent crazy money on a new huge office, threw big parties, and sent their employees traveling everywhere. They also doubled their headcount, when I think we can all agree that they haven't had a surge in volume or features that merits that many new employees. There's no reason that GitHub couldn't be run profitably if th…

I have been using GitHub for maybe 4 years and I feel like the number of features rolled out this year blows away the other years. Review groups and Projets (kanban) have both been great. GitLab started applying pressure and I think GitHub responded well, staying competitive in the face of a competent challenger.

It may have just been a coincidence. I believe they brought major features online two or three weeks after the HN-hatefest against them started, hardly enough time.

I'd also like to point out that Github was probably the most important change in OSS software by a wide margin. People easily forget comfort they've grown accustomed to, but it's worth to take a trip into the past from time to time: https://sourceforge.net/projects/avogadro/?source=frontpage&...

(and that's today's sourceforge – they didn't do much, but 10 years ago it was definitely even worse)

Re: GitHub lost $66M in nine months of 2016

#166

Post by pbhjpbhj »

Analemma_ wrote: post #52
mmastrac wrote: post #3

The thought of losing Github to the startup graveyard is kind of scary. It was bad enough to lose Google Code and when SourceForge had their "great purge" of inactive projects.

If they can't stand on their own feet, I imagine somebody would/will buy GitHub at a firesale rather than see it disappear completely. For all their missteps, they have developer mindshare that is the envy of everyone. If we're lucky it would be someone like Google or Microsoft, if we're unlucky it might be Oracle or SalesForce. Whoever it would end up being though, GitHub won't just vanish.

I'm not sure Google or Microsoft offer hope. The former seem like it would soon shutter it as not returning added value to shareholders and the latter like they'd subtly degrade access from non MS platforms until people wished Google had bought it and shut it down.

It seems like other smaller companies have exploited the profitable parts of Github's niche out from under them.

I think I here a bell tolling.

Re: GitHub lost $66M in nine months of 2016

#167

Post by user5994461 »

dsacco wrote: post #126
sqeaky wrote: post #108

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think I am missing the subtle distinction you are trying to make. It seems like you have real point, but I don't understand; could you expand on it?

In economic terms, it is beneficial for companies to "commoditize their complements." If flights to Miami become cheaper, hotels there can raise their rates. When web browsers became free and ubiquitous, it allowed web applications to prosper on the new influx of people with access to the internet. Google built an empire on this principle. GitHub commoditizes (or more accurately, pressures costs lower to commoditizat…

Agree. It makes sense to diversify and have interests in other companies that are somewhat related to the wider business.

But... we're talking hundreds of millions of dollars in investment. I believe that's too much cash to be just about subsidizing some other companies.

IMO: GitHub has a business model, a reputation and recurring revenues. They may be a "normal"[1] business, with long term value and stable returns over time.

[1] i.e. not yet another ephemeral app with no plan for monetization that grows 100x then sells for 20B and dies 5 years later).

Re: GitHub lost $66M in nine months of 2016

#168

Post by matt4077 »

robszumski wrote: post #146
tekklloneer wrote: post #91

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Github is better. It just is. You don't have to worry about backups, it has great tools built on top of the vcs to make working with it and project management easier. It makes it easier to manage the D part of DVCS, and it lets you easily put your tools into the community. I suspect they see it as a charity case, if true.

If you run an open-source project, the community is on Github and that's where they expect to file bugs. Most users/contributors already have their notifications tweaked the way that they like, understand the workflow and website, etc.

At this point, Github is in the same league as Wikipedia in terms of "a fantastic story of technology helping people to create ad-hoc, altruistic collaborations".

Re: GitHub lost $66M in nine months of 2016

#170

Post by matt4077 »

ProAm wrote: post #62
AceJohnny2 wrote: post #40

Earlier quoted context omitted.

People keep bringing that up, but that's missing the bigger picture: GitHub is more than just a git host, it's also a "social hub" where people can fork repos and offer changes back (pull requests), a passable bugtracker (issues), even wiki, and even web host (github.io). Many people have warned that using these added-value features makes you dependent on GitHub (Linus Torvalds has a kernel mirror on GitHub, but for…

The problem is social hubs add very little real value and are easily replaceable, especially among technically astute people.

I think Github is a prime example of how much a "social hub" can add. In the 6 years or so before GH, do you think I ever send a patch upstream? Now, collaborating is almost easier than not doing it, and it's an awesome community.
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