The GitHub Developer Program | Hacker News Reader

The GitHub Developer Program

developer.github.com

149 pointsbasicallydan59 comments

I'd certainly be interested in knowing what the heck "select features" might be, and what exactly I can do with a development license for GH products... but it's really hard to see whats in it for me with such an uninformative marketing page.

I'm not yet making money off of my github integration, so I can't justify jumping to a paid plan just to see what this is all about...

My guess is that they're trying to build a showcase of all the interesting 'value-adds' around GitHub. They will then use that showcase as part of the sales-pitch for GitHub Enterprise (and allow a chosen few 'developers' to access their Enterprise customers - perhaps via an AppStore model).

"They will then use that showcase as part of the sales-pitch for GitHub Enterprise"

This is pretty much how everybody does it when it comes to enterprise sales. Even massive companies like IBM have partners to fill in gaps in their product line. When it comes to enterprise sales, you don't go in with an minimum viable product, you go in with a Swiss army knife. There is a reason why Jira is the way that it is.

By making it easier for others to develop enterprise grade solutions that is tightly integrated with their own, they can say to potential customers "GitHub Enterprise doesn't do that but we work with a company that does". All it takes is one missing feature for a customer to say no, because they usually have the resources to build it in house. Or superglue together a solution that is ugly, but meets the needs of one or more individuals in the purchasing chain.

I wonder if they will bundle a license for the Atom editor along with the program.

It isn't clear to me what this is. Does anyone mind explaining?

If you click through to register, the following are listed as features:

    * Notification of API changes
    * Early access eligibility on select features
    * Eligibility for development licenses for GitHub products
    * GitHub profile membership badge

It sounds like it just puts your user into a special feature-flag bucket and gives you a badge, for now.

    * Eligibility for development licenses for GitHub products

Anyone have more details on this? The rest seem pretty clear.

It's the rightmost item on the landing page - you can contact GitHub staff and receive access to develop against their enterprise/standalone product (presumably a license to install a local instance for testing, although I guess they could have a test instance set up for you).

Licenses to develop for Github Enterprise Edition (also maybe Atom editor?)

It looks like a good source of information for developers working on products built on top of GitHub's API. (Like Gitpoints, http://gitpoints.com, in my case.)

Gitpoints looks like fun! Beta request sent.

same!

It's funny, this is exactly what I proposed at our company to make sure that tested code gets promoted. If the build fails, the dev loses points, and his next push requires a code review from another person who has more points.

This fell on deaf ears..

Nice use of gamification and programming. It's a good combined niche! Well found!

GitPoints sounds like it could potentially create even more stress at the workplace.

Hopefully not! We're trying hard to focus on making the whole team improve and learn and apply best practices, and not on pointing fingers at the last one in the leaderboard.

You have a point, though. We'll try to prove you wrong ;)

Looks really cool, but I can't give you write access to my (private) repos and not even read access to my private ones.

Program Benefits

    Notification of API changes
    Early access eligibility on select features
    Eligibility for development licenses for GitHub products
    GitHub profile membership badge

> In order to register for the developer program, you must be on a paid plan.

I really don't understand this. I would like to subscribe, but I can't because only the organizations I'm part of but not admin of are paying...

Can you not be added to a team of the said organization ? Or is it that github is not allowing team members of organizations to participate ?

It looks that way, I'm on the owners team of a paid organisation and can't sign up.

You cannot sign up as an individual, your organisation (since it's on a paid plan) will be able to sign up though.

I was able to sign up without a paid plan, but perhaps that's because I've got a student account (comes with free private repos).

That means you are on a paid plan, but have a discount applied (which happens to be the cost of the lowest plan).

No conspiracy theorist has yet claimed that github posted this on HN to get people to pay for a plan, right? :D

lol

Nice! Finally. We've been itching for this since building ZenHub.io, our project management extension built on top of GitHub (http://zenhub.io)

Nice idea and product, but a bit confusing for new users. I felt like I could easily understand the overall idea of your software, but not really what it's supposed to accomplish and how.

Thank you! Great feedback! TBH we've been in "private beta", we have a v2 of the site in development which provides a lot more context / detail and is much more optimized for conversion.

This is super cool! We've been using Trello for project management, but I'm already liking this more.

Edit: FYI, it doesn't react well if you use it on a repo with issues disabled.

Great feedback, thank you. We'll take a look.

At first I thought this might be a developer program to help you run developer programs. Which might be interesting.

Instead it seems more like an airline affinity program. Like, congratulations you get baggage tags.

This is great to hear. My product was designed to be a complementary asset for GitHub and I was wondering what would be the best way to get in contact. And low and behold, they have the "Take on the enterprise" link that lets you know how.

The real money has always been in enterprise and the fact that companies are still shelling out $3,000 for ClearCase licenses demonstrates this. Git is becoming more and more important in enterprise, so it's nice to see GitHub is really going after this market.

Very cool! I'd pinged GitHub's bizdev team to ask about a developer program a few months back and was told that something was in the works. I'm impressed with what they have so up and running so far.

Question for anyone from GH who's reading this - will there be documentation released for how to integrate with GH Enterprise? I imagine there are some implementation details (e.g. OAuth access) that differ between regular GH and a GH enterprise install.

There are some minor differences for integrating with GitHub Enterprise, but just about all the documentation at http://developer.github.com/ applies to both products. While the GitHub.com API is accessed at api.github.com, the API for a GitHub Enterprise install is accessed at yourdomain.com/api/v3/. Definitely shoot us an email if you've got more questions or run into problems: support@github.com.

Is anybody aware why they're limiting this to paid plans?

I'd be on one if there was a benefit besides private repos, which have no use to me.

In a company, many conversations start this way: "Hey, we need more paid accounts. How can we further incentivize people to sign up?"

Maybe having a paid account has more utility to you with this added feature? Maybe you should sign up and try it out hint hint nudge nudge?

Another question is: "Hey, we want to provide a good program, but how do we make sure only to people with serious interest sign up?"

Restricting to paying customers is a good way of weeding out people that just sign up because there is a free sign-up form.

Presumably, if you're going to need the level of access provided by this program, you're probably building something that makes some amount of money. That would make purchasing a paid plan worthwhile, even if all your repos are public.

Well, I don't see why Travis-CI, for example, would have to go on a paid plan to be part of the program. They are first class users of the GitHub APIs but it make no sense to be on a paid plan for them.

Why? Travis has tons of closed stuff running their paid product. So they are probably paying customers anyways.

Can someone provide some more information? The page is basically just redirects to existing resources, and has you signup for a program. What's new here? What are they offering?

Cynically I wonder if they are going to start making it more difficult to use the GitHub API if you aren't part of the program.

We currently have no plans to make it harder to use the API if you aren't part of the program. If you are a business that relies on our API, we want to have a better relationship with you because there is a good chance we share a customer base.

You really should make that clearer. We have a GH Ent. account, and I was curious about what this might offer me when building tooling that we use internally. Nothing on that page gives any real clue. And the link on the Registration page redirects you back to the same page you were just on moments ago. Or at least make a developer friendly page for those that don't grok marketing text.

And you'd do what with our customers? Or you'd give us customers? You're big, we're small…how is this not going to be a Twitter API-ocalpyse situation?

Respectfully yours, Someone who was in the shit

I'm still not clear what a developer license to build and test against GHE is. "Take on the enterprise" links to a support form.

GitHub Enterprise is the on-premise version of GitHub.com that you can buy to run on your own servers. If you are in the developer program and building a product that integrates with GitHub Enterprise, we will give you free licenses for dev/test purposes.

OK I see, thanks. That does sound useful.

Not sure why you were downvoted. A perfectly reasonable growth strategy would be to limit API requests for applications based on a free plan (and progressively increase the limit based on the plan chosen)

Neat. This is better motivation for me to hop on the paid account tier than the private repos, which I have no use for because I don't hide my personal source code.

(I mean, if I were to do it, it would be mainly to support a company that makes a great product I use and love. Voting with my wallet for things I want to see more of in this world, and all that. Since they don't wanna take money from me via Gittip. :( )

Hate to be picky, but shouldn't it be "kudos are all yours"?

I like to think I write decent copy, and am genuinely curious. I'm assuming whoever wrote that actually thought about it, and can probably tell me why I'm wrong

From oxforddictionaries.com[1]

Kudos comes from Greek and means ‘praise’. Despite appearances, it is not a plural form.

[1] http://www.oxforddictionaries.com/definition/english/kudos

Thanks so much!

That is a great news! We were thinking about it for our GitHub issue queue product heavily relying on the GitHub API: Octokan (http://octokan.com/).

Actual blog post about it: https://github.com/blog/1790-announcing-the-github-developer...

> The URL for the product, company, or service that integrates with GitHub.

Do they accept personal website for now? I have ideas but not a product or a domain to spare

A personal website is just fine. We're mostly interested in a link to something that you are building or plan to build that integrates with GitHub.

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