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I’m Nat Friedman, Future CEO of GitHub. AMA

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Re: I’m Nat Friedman, Future CEO of GitHub. AMA

#141
post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Did the Minecraft thing not make money for them? I imagine now that it's on a ton of platforms it's made that back?

As of January 2018, over 144 million copies had been sold across all platforms, making it the second best-selling video game of all time behind Tetris. ^ from wikipedia If they sold each for $10, then thats $1.5 bil (if my maths right). So I think it's safe to say that they have not made their money back ... yet.

It's $26 on PC and $20 on Xbox, so the revenue is about there

Re: I’m Nat Friedman, Future CEO of GitHub. AMA

#142

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My sense is that any projects willing to move from GitHub to gitlab on a Sunday evening because of a rumour that GitHub was going to be sold were not really serious projects and losing them isn't a big loss for GitHub.

This is exactly right. However, just because some projects can't up and move on a moment's notice doesn't mean the ball isn't rolling.

Yea, my projects are still on there. But it's not going to stay there. It's just there because I've been too busy to investigate alternatives and move. But I will in a week or three.

Re: I’m Nat Friedman, Future CEO of GitHub. AMA

#143
post #20

"Developers are independent thinkers..." He seems to be playing the typical corporate lackey role. His comments are all full of condescension, platitudes, and corpspeak. He sounds more like a PR person than a principled leader. He's saying exactly what he thinks his audience wants to hear. It's not surprising that he thrived as a Microsoft exec. That he's willing to make promises about GitHub's future is also telling…

His answers read like they were written by a bot tbh.

Re: I’m Nat Friedman, Future CEO of GitHub. AMA

#144
post #11

> That said, the GitHub team reports that the set of users who have migrated or closed their accounts is extremely small, and this is more than made up for by the surge of new signups and new interest in GitHub this week. It's interesting to hear this. If you were on HN the past week, it might have seemed from all the front page articles that GitHub was about to implode due to an an exodus to GitLab.

Using HackerNews reaction as a main source of information will almost always drastically skew reality. It reminds me of people shorting Facebook because of the #deletefacebook campaign, when in reality getting a few thousand people to delete Facebook in protest is offset in a few minutes by growth.

I can tell you that my Facebook feed is dead. Very few post anymore. I don't really post anymore either. I just have it for events.

Re: I’m Nat Friedman, Future CEO of GitHub. AMA

#145

Microsoft should just make Github open source. It would be a great PR move and an amazing build of trust. I don't know why Github was not open source to begin with. Why do companies still think source code is a big deal? This is not Google Search or some advanced AI.

Making it open source doesn't mean anybody could use it in a proper manner - I guess it's a ton of services which need a lot of setup and management as it's purposely build to support a few million repos and users.

Yes, but consider the scenario. Microsoft, acquiring a company, then open sourcing it, and still maintaining/building on it. If that happens, I'd be very much amazed and that would go a very long way towards making me stay (or, by then, move back). For me, open source is both practical and ideological.

Re: I’m Nat Friedman, Future CEO of GitHub. AMA

#146

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Little things like this build more trust with me than all the carefully written press release blogs ever could.

I think this falls under “I want a president I would have a beer with”, you’re judging something by a bad metric.

Only if it's the only metric. I've worked with people who would never be comfortable making jokes like that in a public forum, always having their "PR-mode" on, and they tend to be the ones that don't have a ton of empathy.

Being able to interact with the community in a human way is definitely a good signal, imo.

Re: I’m Nat Friedman, Future CEO of GitHub. AMA

#147
post #4

I asked: What are your thoughts on how GitHub can incentivize open source work financially? Perhaps by integrating something like Patreon or OpenCollective in the website. It seems that he won't answer it. Still would be awesome if GitHub started addressing this in some way in the future. EDIT: He answered it. https://www.reddit.com/r/AMA/comments/8pc8mf/im_nat_friedman...

He didn't really answer it, though. We, too, would "find it amazing to see what could happen". But that doesn't tell us anything whatsoever.

Re: I’m Nat Friedman, Future CEO of GitHub. AMA

#150
post #141
post #120

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As of January 2018, over 144 million copies had been sold across all platforms, making it the second best-selling video game of all time behind Tetris. ^ from wikipedia If they sold each for $10, then thats $1.5 bil (if my maths right). So I think it's safe to say that they have not made their money back ... yet.

It's $26 on PC and $20 on Xbox, so the revenue is about there

+ microtransactions for skins and graphics packs
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