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Comment by SketchySeaBeast | Hacker News Reader

> Well, if true -- I'll be canceling my subscription :D > Thank you Github / Microsoft!

What a weird way to thank a company. I get it, but still.

Microsoft doesn’t need thanking. It’s not a mom and pop shop.

GitHub also doesn’t live in a vacuum and this is likely not puuuurely done out of the goodness of MS’s heart. There may have been some strategy wrt gitlab and bitbucket taken into consideration. Dare I say... competition?

I don’t doubt their goodwill, but let’s not pretend the market is about that for MS.

Edit—ah I now see the “thank you” in parent’s post. Ok disregard this, then. Totally fair. I’m dumb. :)

Did they just cut off a significant source of revenue, or do companies that subscribe to Enterprise make them so much more money that it doesn’t matter?

Now that they belong to Microsoft, direct revenue is no longer as important. GitHub will probably be treated as a loss leader for the time being, with the long term goal of making it an Enterprise leader.

Microsoft will be more than happy to use GitHub for analytics, AI/ML research and to drive developers to their other offerings, especially their cloud ones.

Edit: Updated error from "lost" to "loss"

Just FYI - its "loss leader" (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Loss_leader), although "lost leader" made me chuckle: I thought, for a second, maybe you are talking about Apple instead of Microsoft.

Github was never profitable, private repos were a way to squeeze out a bit of money when they could, but it would never support the service.

Now that they're part of Microsoft, Github's corporate goal isn't to be financially solvent anymore, it is to be a loss-leader for Microsoft's other products. Hook people with github, and then get money from them by offering integrations with Azure, Office, Windows, Sharepoint, etc.

Github was always profitable, that's why they only took VC money in 2015, after around 7 years of existence. With VC funding they started looking more at enterprise customers.

I believe individual paid accounts were a tiny fraction of total revenue.

It’s about getting as much visibility and usage as possible from developers in hopes that you would recommend Github in your organisation. Also provides a strong platform to reach a very targeted audience as well as gauge developer trends.

Microsoft's other git hosting offering, Azure DevOps, has had free, unlimited, private repos for a long time now so it's not really anything new for Microsoft; it's just extending that to more users.

Github allows Microsoft to grab the attention of every software developer on the planet. And, as we know, most software developers are early adopters and enjoy sharing technology with others.

With AWS’s quality of service going downhill, and Google’s apparent inability to execute, this gives MS a huge advantage. Remember, AWS is pretty much how Amazon stays profitable.

I currently am on the $7/mo plan for myself (5 private repos I think) - I presume for users this benefits, there's no need to cancel anything.

I think you have unlimited private repos with that plan.

That’s the one I have too

Yep, but intented this way.

I don't thank for profit companies. They should thank me.

Ideally, both parties act out of self-interest and both benefit. Thanks, while nice, are not required of either side.

In this day and age, I dare say both sides of any exchange could benefit from cultivating sincere gratitude for the non-monetary contributions resulting from the exchange.

Thankless business is killing us culturally.

[deleted]

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