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GitHub postponing the announced billing change for self-hosted GitHub Actions

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Re: GitHub postponing the announced billing change for self-hosted GitHub Actions

#81

Post by dirkc »

codeflo wrote: post #73

My theory: Some manager's KPI is to increase the number of sold GitHub runner minutes. So they did some market research -- not enough to have a clear picture, but barely enough to be dangerous -- and found that some companies use self-hosted runners for cost reasons. So they deploy a two-pronged strategy: lower the cost of GitHub runners, and charge for the use of self-hosted runners, to incentivize switching. This f…

I agree with (c) - I can't quite pinpoint it, but I've had that feeling myself several times.

Re: GitHub postponing the announced billing change for self-hosted GitHub Actions

#82

Post by Xylakant »

joshstrange wrote: post #76
Xylakant wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Fun thing is that almost every other CI as a service provider charges you in some shape or form for self hosted runners. CircleCI limits the number of self-hosted Job Running in parallel based on your plan and charges a fixed base fee per seat. So moving away from GHA will not make self-hosted runners free, they’ll move into a different pricing structure that may or may not be beneficial. And I think charging for sel…

> So I’m actually fine with the proposed change since it also gives me the power as a customer to say “hey, I’m paying for this, fix it.” I’m paying for GitHub Action now and there is zero recourse (other than leaving). Giving them money doesn’t change anything. I’d be more willing to pay if GH Actions wasn’t so flakey and frustrating (for hosted or self-hosted runners, I use both). At least self-hosted runners are w…

> I’d be more willing to pay if GH Actions wasn’t so flakey and frustrating (for hosted or self-hosted runners, I use both).

This is indeed a reason I do consider leaving GHA. The underinvestment into this part of the product shows. But they also did announce quite some investment into new and (for us relevant) features alongside the pricing change, so I'll have a look at how this changes with some sorely needed work on the product.

Re: GitHub postponing the announced billing change for self-hosted GitHub Actions

#83

Post by linuxftw »

tom-9999 wrote: post #29

1. Announce price increase generating bad publicity. 2. Kill bad publicity with blog pretending to be understanding and taking on feedback while "pausing" the increase. 3. Implement price increase a few months later when the bad publicity wave is over, and its old news so wont generate new headlines.

This is my take as well.

Personally, I think this is all overblown anyway. Their pricing seems fair to me. Too many people are used to getting something for nothing. Most companies will just pay the new prices, because the time to develop and setup an alternative will far exceed just paying the new fees to GH (when you account for engineering cost).

Re: GitHub postponing the announced billing change for self-hosted GitHub Actions

#84

Post by altmanaltman »

codeflo wrote: post #73

My theory: Some manager's KPI is to increase the number of sold GitHub runner minutes. So they did some market research -- not enough to have a clear picture, but barely enough to be dangerous -- and found that some companies use self-hosted runners for cost reasons. So they deploy a two-pronged strategy: lower the cost of GitHub runners, and charge for the use of self-hosted runners, to incentivize switching. This f…

"Hey ChatGPT, how do I increase the number of GitHub runner minutes? DO NOT suggested anything illegal, research hard"

Re: GitHub postponing the announced billing change for self-hosted GitHub Actions

#85

Post by bilekas »

grub5000 wrote: post #59
bilekas wrote: post #25

> GitHub stated that it has canceled the price increase after reviewing developer feedback. It added that it will take time to listen to customers and partners. I get the feeling they got the feedback that their runners are not as indispensable to developers as they thought and realized they would lose a significant amount of users. Now if only they would listen to the feedback about windows 11 and their forced copil…

> Now if only they would listen to the feedback about windows 11 and their forced copilot we might be onto something. You can just uninstall Copilot? It’s nowhere on my Surface Laptop 7 with W11.

It has reappeared on mine after mandatory windows updates which is frustrating and also it looks like it will be arriving on my TV soon too without the option to remove it.

> https://www.tomshardware.com/service-providers/tv-providers/...

So it's not a stretch to assume they will continue to force it in their OS.

Re: GitHub postponing the announced billing change for self-hosted GitHub Actions

#87

Post by muixoozie »

000ooo000 wrote: post #46
dvh wrote: post #43

There's one thing I don't understand. Isn't GitHub action just "take a repo, do something with it, save something somewhere". So how is it different than writing a bash script that "clones the repo, do something with it, pushes the changes back"? If actions became paid feature, wouldn't that just generated myriads of show hn posts like "I recreated GitHub actions in xyz"?

Where does one get to suffer YAML hell then??

Hand roll something on k8s. Yaml seems unavoidable in that ecosystem. :)

Re: GitHub postponing the announced billing change for self-hosted GitHub Actions

#88

Post by dijit »

Uehreka wrote: post #33
tom-9999 wrote: post #29

1. Announce price increase generating bad publicity. 2. Kill bad publicity with blog pretending to be understanding and taking on feedback while "pausing" the increase. 3. Implement price increase a few months later when the bad publicity wave is over, and its old news so wont generate new headlines.

Nah, that doesn’t work when the substance of the change is this intense and has an actual effect on peoples’ bottom lines. If they wait a few months and try again, people will see their bills go up immediately and they’ll all get mad again. I don’t know what GH will do next, but if they try to do that, it will definitely backfire.

A lot of evidence that this is not the case.

It happens a lot, Atlassian being a really prominent example with their “SaaS only” change.

Re: GitHub postponing the announced billing change for self-hosted GitHub Actions

#89

Post by g947o »

codeflo wrote: post #73

My theory: Some manager's KPI is to increase the number of sold GitHub runner minutes. So they did some market research -- not enough to have a clear picture, but barely enough to be dangerous -- and found that some companies use self-hosted runners for cost reasons. So they deploy a two-pronged strategy: lower the cost of GitHub runners, and charge for the use of self-hosted runners, to incentivize switching. This f…

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=46189692 from a few days ago pretty much tells me that any company that slightly cares about security cannot possibly depend on GitHub runner for their CI (except maybe the smallest/simplest projects). It is just one compromised package away from ruining everything.
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