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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

#271

Post by ma138 »

drspacemonkey wrote: post #97
Fiahil wrote: post #77

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I believe gitlab's UI has gotten better lastly. Nevertheless, if 99% of the value provided by github comes from their interface, should we remember how much time they needed to implement the "+1" counters on messages?

Agreed. Gitlab's interface is better. Especially the issue board. Throw in their fully-integrated CI platform and container registry basically makes Gitlab a winner.

You can really improve the GitHub issue board experience with tools like ZenHub [1] - which is further ahead than the GitLab project management experience. This extra functionality is really needed in order to get the PM's buy in to switch from Jira.

The GitHub ecosystem will be the biggest hurdle for GitLab to overcome. (Disclosure - I work at ZenHub)

[1] https://www.zenhub.com/

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

#272

Post by kevin_thibedeau »

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…

If your app truly is such a money machine with guaranteed returns why aren't you using it privately to enrich yourself?

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

#274

Post by [deleted] »

golergka wrote: post #223
ForHackernews wrote: post #123

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

What's stopping other companies from using your GPL software in their proprietary stuff without telling anyone? Not every company out there is a startup who needs to be sparkling clean to pass due diligence for the next round, acquisition or IPO. A lot of companies out there are perfectly fine with a little bit of cheating here and there — I would actually say that most of them are. Especially when you remember about…

[deleted]

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

#275

Post by martindale »

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…

> a 5x return with no risk to them

There's something strange going on here. What software do you produce?

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

#276

Post by danielweber »

Spooky23 wrote: post #255
dsacco wrote: post #157

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I agree with the idea that venture capitalists alter ("distort" is a loaded term) the market in their favor. That's part of the natural process of systems commoditizing their complements. But I really think that you characterize this in an uncharitable way with your example, which I have difficulty believing as it was stated. If your lead really understood that they would "immediately earn a 5x return with no risk",…

People do stupid shit like this all of the time. Folks are trained to get many types of products for free. I've seen similar cases where businesses refuse to pay for things like licensed information that have a clear and obvious value.

Because once I need to pay for something, I need to get my boss's approval, and then he's going to ask all these stupid questions.

(Not me specifically, but I've been there in past places.)

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

#277

Post by bato »

dotnetisnotdead wrote: post #112
dijit wrote: post #76

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

This new mindset is dangerous and self defeating by nature. By hiring someone less qualified because they're a minority or woman just makes others resent them. Especially those who are minorities and/or women and they ARE qualified and have worked to get where they are (source: I'm talking about myself here). Why did we work so hard to become great at our jobs to just have someone else less qualified plopped in next…

Nice of you to assume that women and minorities are less qualified.

Especially in light of the numerous studies that show that people (men AND women) keep assuming on your technical skills solely based on genders.

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

#279

Post by quanticle »

adrr wrote: post #103
Analemma_ wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 figured MSFT was going to buy them and have it integrate nicely with Azure. They could do hosted enterprise github's natively on azure and would outclass code commit on AWS. Instead they bought linkedin which doesn't make sense to me.

Microsoft already has Visual Studio Team Services, which is its Git-compatible source code and work-item-tracking system. Like GitLab, VSTS is focusing on enterprise sales first (though there is a free-tier that you can play with). Why would Microsoft want to buy Github and try to refocus it when it already has a product that caters to its enterprise clientele?

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

#280

Post by adventured »

nitrogen wrote: post #208
Analemma_ wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

Ignoring the fact that the VCs want to get paid and GitHub's employees want to keep working, how big of a skeleton crew would it take to keep a site like GitHub running in "maintenance" mode?

Post VC investment, GitHub would never be allowed to exist in maintenance mode. It would be liquidated in one form or another if things were that dire. Once they took the venture capital, the possible outcomes narrowed considerably.
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