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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

#201
You know, I can't say I'm surprised. When github first started, it was just about code. Nothing else. Then they started with all the identity politics crap.

As soon as a company starts parroting political messages like "white middle managers have no empathy" instead of, you know, building good tools, I know it's time to find another solution. I was a paying customer, and when github got into the political game, I dropped them like a bad habit.

I'm not screwing around here, I'm trying to build a business and your political aspirations do _nothing_ for me as a customer, so why don't you take them and shove em. Happy customer at bitbucket ever since.

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

#204
post #190

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Perhaps you live in a world different from mine, but what you describe as "cartoonishly foolish" behavior I consider completely standard. Customers refuse to spend 5000 to make 20.000 all the time, or they're willing to waste weeks finding a different vendor that can offer the same for 3000. Others are willing to walk away from a great deal unless they get a discount, but are content with a tiny discount. Because a d…

I live in the same world as you. My business has a proven model for digital publishers that generally increases their yield 2-4x yet they refuse to spend the percentage needed to make the deal happen. Sometimes pride can be so large...spend 5k to make 50k? No thanks..lol

> generally increases their yield 2-4x

> spend 5k to make 50k

I'm sure it has nothing to do with people making numbers up.

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

#206
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…

Now try selling a $35 mobile app in the world of $0.99 and ad-supported free apps.

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

#207
post #4

Part of me is glad the "inclusive" practices of only hiring women and minorities isn't being rewarded. At the same time, GitHub really is at the centre of opensource- how can they be losing money when they are literally the defacto code hosting site? And if they go under, who could replace them?

Got a rigorous analysis anywhere backing the assertion that GitHub's failures are due to '"inclusive" practices'?

Do YOU have any rigorous analysis that "inclusive" practices like insulting white people by saying "white middle managers can't have empathy" in internal company presentations increases profitability and success at a company?

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

#208
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.

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?

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

#209

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Joey Hess' github-backup backs up everything github knows about a repository (including branches, tags, other forks, issues, comments, wikis, milestones, pull requests, watchers, and stars) to the repository. I'm sure most of these could be re-imported into an alternative service through its API, even if with some loss of fidelity. https://github.com/joeyh/github-backup

That's awesome. I need to send JoeyH more money. (for others: he's also the creator of git-annex, an out-of-band file storage extension to git, and for a long time was the maintainer of critical parts of Debian's ecosystem. He likes to live in a yurt: http://joeyh.name/yurt/ )

https://www.patreon.com/joeyh

^^

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