[TAForObvReasons]

The economics were aligned with the customers. The whole business model was based on paying for private services using the same great tooling that was available for open source projects. People developed familiarity with open source and naturally clamored for the same tooling within companies. It was a loss leader of sorts.

Now the economic incentives are different. This would be true if Google acquired Github or if Amazon or Facebook or Twitter or any other company acquired it. Since it's not a standalone company, the parent company optimizing for greatest comprehensive profits will make decisions that are not always optimal if GitHub were standalone.

[cwyers]

I'm pretty sure that the economics were aligned with getting bought out by someone. Upselling people who used the free product was not making them profitable and they weren't on the path to profitable.

[TAForObvReasons]

The GitHub story is complex. There was a time years ago when they were profitable: https://signalvnoise.com/posts/2486-bootstrapped-profitable-... They and Sidekiq were the poster children of bootstrapped profitable businesses around open source. Something very clearly changed (most likely raising a boatload from VC firms and the ensuing perils) that flipped the situation.

[scarface74]

GitHub had thier first round of VC funding in 2012.

https://www.crunchbase.com/organization/github