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GitHub Raises $250M at $2B Valuation

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Re: GitHub Raises $250M at $2B Valuation

#331

Post by tomchristie »

timr wrote: post #63
calcsam wrote: post #41

Both this piece, and most commenters, seem to miss the point about where Github's value comes from. It's not for being a social identity for programmers, or hosting open-source libraries. Those are worthy pursuits, but from a business perspective mostly serve as marketing. Github is basically Microsoft Word for programmers, and is an essential part of their workflow. Companies that need enterprise functionality aroun…

Microsoft Word became a valuable monopoly because it was a proprietary standard. But git hosting is a commodity service. There are already a number of players doing exactly what GitHub does, for less money, and it's trivially easy to migrate a repository away from GitHub to those other providers. Something tells me that the "facebook for programmers" angle is essential to selling the dream here. The so-called "networ…

> There are already a number of players doing exactly what GitHub does

There are folks delivering similar services, but nothing remotely of the same standard.

> there isn't that much that ties a project to GitHub

They don't need to have any stickyness if they continue to provide a service that's far superior to other's offerings.

New entrants will find it incredibly difficult to break through at this point because of the immense investment that'd be needed to rival GitHub's service, and the lack of achieving significant user base and income during that process.

> Something tells me that the "facebook for programmers" angle is essential to selling the dream here.

The network aspect doesn't really need to be their main selling point.

GitHub's value to development companies is dead simple: It's a more productive tool than anything else out there.

Re: GitHub Raises $250M at $2B Valuation

#332

Post by adamors »

Retra wrote: post #270
mynameishere wrote: post #227

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Github is basically Microsoft Word for programmers That makes no sense at all. It's like the "track changes" feature in Word, maybe. You know--one little feature on a much, much larger tool.

The point is that it is a standard, critical work tool.

It's really not. In the last 3 places I worked at we all used Bitbucket because their pricing is more reasonable and it integrates nicely with other Atlassian products like Jira.

Re: GitHub Raises $250M at $2B Valuation

#333

Post by cpach »

nulltype wrote: post #189
tptacek wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

More money > less money? Don't look at me. We didn't raise VC either. Nor will we, until I take off this "WWMCD" bracelet.

I'm pretty sure he'd go to Antarctica.

Starfighter should take funding, open up a local antarctic branch and hire Maciej as the office manager.

Re: GitHub Raises $250M at $2B Valuation

#334

Post by NicoJuicy »

calcsam wrote: post #41

Both this piece, and most commenters, seem to miss the point about where Github's value comes from. It's not for being a social identity for programmers, or hosting open-source libraries. Those are worthy pursuits, but from a business perspective mostly serve as marketing. Github is basically Microsoft Word for programmers, and is an essential part of their workflow. Companies that need enterprise functionality aroun…

Microsoft Word as source control for programmers is Visual Studio Online, which also supports git.

Not Github ;-)

PS. Visual Studio Online is free up to 5 team members and costs 20€ / user / month for every additional team member ( so essentially saving 100 €/ month). It's also free for msdn subscribers

Re: GitHub Raises $250M at $2B Valuation

#335

Post by sytse »

findjashua wrote: post #139
toomuchtodo wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

My comment wasn't intended to make you bite. HipChat is playing catchup constantly with Slack (except the @here feature; Slack was behind the ball on that one). Slack's channel integrations are incredibly smooth. Message delivery is so much more reliable on Slack mobile than HipChat's app ever was (perhaps this was iOS specific?). Message management (stars, pinning, history links I can take from Slack and throw into…

my apologies if my tone come across as combative. Slack: 1. I agree on the part about multiple teams, but since I only use it for work, it hasn't really been much of an issue. 2. I never really had any issues w message delivery, I'm on Android though, and it seems like you're on iOS. 3. I also don't remember having any issues w integrations, do you have a specific example of something that it wasn't able to do? 4. Wh…

GitLab protects the master branch by default and other branches can be configured to be protected. Protected branches don't allow force pushes or deletions from anyone.

Re: GitHub Raises $250M at $2B Valuation

#336

Post by proveanegative »

hga wrote: post #67
calcsam wrote: post #41

Both this piece, and most commenters, seem to miss the point about where Github's value comes from. It's not for being a social identity for programmers, or hosting open-source libraries. Those are worthy pursuits, but from a business perspective mostly serve as marketing. Github is basically Microsoft Word for programmers, and is an essential part of their workflow. Companies that need enterprise functionality aroun…

I'm not aware of Microsoft Word or any editor I've ever used or heard of forbidding me from using the word "retards" or any other. Heck, Gnu Emacs allows me to write proprietary software, a user freedom RMS is no doubt not entirely happy with. I require that general freedom of expression in my tools and do no tolerate vendors who engage in these sorts of damaging stunts. I suspect I'm not alone, and I note GitHub has…

If this is where the things are going the time may soon come for someone to launch a GitHub clone that deliberately only bans illegal content and provides technological means of protection against Twitter mobs.

Meanwhile, it would be nice to have a reusable code of conduct written with the same attitude. E.g., it would only forbid personal attacks, credible threats of violence against other contributors and violations of the law (like committing warez to the repository). It would deny any responsibility for what the contributors say elsewhere on the Internet and state an unwillingness to discuss their speech on the project grounds. It could include anti-blackmail clauses like that agitating people on social media to "support" your issue by shaming the maintainers will get you banned and the issue closed immediately and irrevocably. The latter would have to be carefully written, though, to not be exploitable.

Re: GitHub Raises $250M at $2B Valuation

#337

Post by _ak »

samt wrote: post #158
geographomics wrote: post #144

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What a curious turn of events. Is "retard" particularly offensive in some cultures? I wasn't aware it had such inflammatory power behind it.

Yes it is highly offensive to many English speaking individuals in the US. It has historically been used as a highly derogatory term for disabled individuals.

"Mental retardation" has been a medical term since relatively recently. The "retardation" means nothing more than "being held back". But people did pick it up as a derogatory term, and so it was replaced with "intellectual disability". A classic euphemism treadmill.

In the context of medication, "retard" is still in use: it describes medication that is released steadily and continuously into the bloodstream.

Re: GitHub Raises $250M at $2B Valuation

#338

Post by seunosewa »

jwr wrote: post #323
mpdehaan2 wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Despite having a gazillion issue trackers, something halfway between the two would be welcome. GitHub issue tracking is not good enough to manage any kind of large project, JIRA is a bit of a beast. I'd prefer having an integrated JIRA any day, though I do still strongly DISLIKE JIRA. There's still opportunity for something better IMHO. (For very small teams, I find that's Trello, but Trello isn't really for large gr…

I can confirm there is an opening for something new. We use FogBugz (and pay quite a bit for the hosted version), because GitHub issues are too simplistic, and we hate JIRA. However, FogBugz has its share of problems, and I'd gladly move to something else, if only there was something better. Must-haves that many companies miss are: * flawless E-mail integration, * task numbers, * API that lets me attach code commit l…

So basically, you want to (1) pay less for (2) a faster product that is (3) simpler and (4) less buggy, but also (5) implements most features that customers ask for.

Re: GitHub Raises $250M at $2B Valuation

#340

Post by leftnode »

hueving wrote: post #292
Retra wrote: post #270

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The point is that it is a standard, critical work tool.

No it's not. I work in open source and very rarely use github. git is a standard tool, github is only a polished frontend that seems to be a standard amongst web developers.

Yeah, there, are, um, a lot of them.
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