A lot of people are concerned about the “what if they make me the product since I’m no longer paying.”
A few reasons I don’t think that will happen:
- private, single contributor repos tend to be pretty small. it costs Github very little to service a single account.
- Github is a growing social network for developers. Getting young engineers on the platform for free will pay off handsomely when they join a team and automatically assume Github is their code storage tool of choice.
- Microsoft gets the reputation points for running the de facto developer social network (other than Stack Overflow).
GitHub is in the strange position of being both a successful enterprise product AND a social network. What other product exists with that kind of crossover? Microsoft will continue to optimize their enterprise revenue from GH and I think this is a tremendous step forward toward building the network long term.
A few reasons I don’t think that will happen:
- private, single contributor repos tend to be pretty small. it costs Github very little to service a single account.
- Github is a growing social network for developers. Getting young engineers on the platform for free will pay off handsomely when they join a team and automatically assume Github is their code storage tool of choice.
- Microsoft gets the reputation points for running the de facto developer social network (other than Stack Overflow).
GitHub is in the strange position of being both a successful enterprise product AND a social network. What other product exists with that kind of crossover? Microsoft will continue to optimize their enterprise revenue from GH and I think this is a tremendous step forward toward building the network long term.