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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

#471

Post by alistproducer2 »

daveguy wrote: post #349
alistproducer2 wrote: post #340

The subtext to this (at least why this made it to the front page) is "github is lighting money on fire, can't last forever, but github is infrastructure-status now what if it disappears?" I think this anxiety is why there's a lot of work being done in the decentralized space right now. The UX-side of "web 3.0" is sorely lacking but I think it's only a matter of time before people begin to crack it. I'd love to see so…

Wait. We're on web 3.0 now? What does this version add?

Decentralized applications and infrastructure.

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

#472

Post by lmm »

rexreed wrote: post #388
nslindtner wrote: post #383

Earlier quoted context omitted.

From the outside it looks like a land grab game. Competetion is heating up (bitbucket, gitlab, tfs online, etc).

but is throwing all this money at a company who clearly doesn't know how to effectively deploy it to grab that land (those expenditures are ridiculous) the best way to do it?

Well if they thought another company had better odds than GitHub they'd fund that company instead. GitHub has got to where they are at the moment so they must be doing something right, and startups are dead by default - VCs expect startups to be doing at least some things that defy the established wisdom.

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

#473

Post by cyphar »

gizmo wrote: post #450
cyphar wrote: post #296

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> A test like that only works when you swap like for like, and you don't. Maybe I'm odd for thinking that black people and white people should be treated equally. But sure, let's pretend that racism is only possible to be inflicted on minorities. > Saying "there are too many black guys in the senate" on the other hand is racist No. It would be racist to say "there are too many black guys in the senate -- let's get ri…

1. Equal treatment would be correct in a counterfactual society that is not racist. Acting as though society is not racist, when it fact it is, will just preserve the status quo. Racism needs to be actively counteracted for society to get better. 2. No, just stating that "2 out of a 100 black senators is too many" is racist by itself. To get proportional representation for all minorities the number of white people in…

Points 1 and 2 I'm not _entirely_ sure if I agree with them (I agree there is a problem with racism, but I'm not sure I agree with your conclusions about what is and is not racist as a result), but point 3 is the only one I feel I need to respond to.

> 3. I don't know where you got the idea that diversity efforts are about hiring one group of people, but you're mistaken.

This thread is about hiring managers that have publicly stated they only hire minorities, and GitHub having internal presentations where they say that "white middle managers have no empathy".

I agree that diversity requires hiring a diverse group of people you hire (by definition). But that's not what the GitHub hiring managers appear to think (and that was the whole point of this thread).

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

#474

Post by rogual »

unethical_ban wrote: post #226
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.

Maybe, just maybe, someday we'll have a decentralized web with a web-of-trust identity framework, and people can host their own email, code repository, and even website! P.S. to put a bit more effort into my post: I really do wonder if the discoverability problem of a decentralized web can be better solved for things like social networks, code sharing, etc.

Startup idea for someone: A search engine that only indexes decentralized, self-hosted stuff. No Github, FB, etc. Hell, go ahead and delist all sites using Google Analytics.

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

#475

Post by cyphar »

romanovcode wrote: post #468
cyphar wrote: post #362

Earlier quoted context omitted.

$0. I would consider paying ~$30/mo for GitLab though, because it's free (as in freedom) software.

Agree, I would not mind paying for Gitlab private repos some sum of money (probably not 30/mo tho). Gitlab is superior in every possible way than Github except for it's speed.

I'd pay for public repos (I don't need private repos, all of my code is free software). In fact, I would _donate_ $30/mo to GitLab if I used their services enough (unfortunately the projects I maintain live on GitHub and I don't have the authority to change that).

I have no problem donating to free software (I donate $10/mo to Neovim, $10 to SirCmpwn (sway), and other bits and bobs here and there -- as well as donating my time to openSUSE, runC and the OCI). The only condition is that I have to use it enough that I feel that they are owed some money to make the software even better.

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

#476

Post by rampage101 »

I remember reading a few years ago how GitHub and StackOverflow were the new resumes. You needed a good profile on both to have any chance of getting hired.

It just goes to show that having a profile on a website does not define who you are as a developer. Websites go under, and better ones will rise up. I hope GitHub does stay around... I do not care for their "politics" but I like their service.

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

#477

Post by lmm »

dsacco wrote: post #157
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…

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",…

Do you believe that "dumping" in the hopes of obtaining a monopoly is a real thing that happens or at least happened? (e.g. Standard Oil)

Leaving aside the question of what their intentions are, do VCs do something economically equivalent?

And now bringing back intentions, if the economic effects (and the resulting impact on customers) are the same, does the intention matter?

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

#478

Post by josteink »

wapz wrote: post #375
flukus wrote: post #341

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But github has a monetization strategy, they're a paid service. This is more about their headcount expanding and possibly losing paying customers because they decided to get political.

I didn't follow when github started getting political. What happened?

> I didn't follow when github started getting political. What happened?

They suddenly decided to be a PC/feminist stronghold, with the associated reverse-logic, claiming words like "meritocracy" were actually oppressing and not empowering, and what not.

http://readwrite.com/2014/01/24/github-meritocracy-rug/

After that stance was lost, you would every now and then read about just another piece about Github where PC politics were being inserted as Github policy.

https://hacked.com/github-promotes-reverse-racism-sexism/

It's been a gradual, but noticeable process.

You may or may not agree with the means/politics itself, but there should be no question that Github itself has been getting increasingly political recent years.

And when you do that, you are bound to alienate someone. I, like many others, would prefer Github to remain a dumb/neutral service-provider. That's what I use it for. I don't need it to throw a political platform in my face.

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

#479

Post by ooqr »

pjc50 wrote: post #449
StreamBright wrote: post #409

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Similar to Twitter. I do not understand why the hell they get political.

The mountain does not go to Mohammed, Mohammed goes to the mountain. That is, politics is not something you can opt out of. Choosing to do or not do certain things impacts certain individuals and groups. The result is politics. It comes to you. If you operate any system by which humans can communicate, politics is inevitable.

While true, if you've heard of any of the happenings at GitHub, you know it's not that simple and that they have been aggressively political in the past.

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

#480

Post by zigzigzag »

fergie wrote: post #433
inthewoods wrote: post #237

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or is it - to me Github is just another example of the developer tools market cycle. Reminds me a bit of the image hosting market - image hosting company is created and gains momentum, then has to monetize, so they add advertising and people start to drift away when someone else then creates the next image hosting site. In the developer space, it seems pretty much the same. SourceForge was good/cool until it wasn't,…

SourceForge and GitHub feel different. SourceForge was always _really_ spammy from day one, GitHub has a far superior product. It seems logical that GitHub will eventually figure out how to make money, even if it is just by following the tried and trusted "project management system" model

SourceForge wasn't spammy from day one. I remember it back in the first year or so of its existence. It was actually really good, and an absolute revolution for the open source community as no such sites had existed prior to that. It immediately gained massive traction and was every bit as central to the open source/free software community as github is today.
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