[phillmv]

>Because if this is registrations, I thought they were a lot bigger already.

No way. How many programmers are there in the first place? I bet you it's <100M, hell <50M.

EDIT: Back of the envelope by other people put it between <12M to <24M http://stackoverflow.com/questions/453880/how-many-developer...

Under that perspective, one could say that Github has captured the attention of 4-8% of everyone capable of understanding the app.

[Retric]

I think it depends on how you define programmer. If you are just looking at people who write scrips or excel macro's etc then it might be as high as: 6billion people * 1/3 have computers * 25% of computer users write scrips = 500 million people. Or you could limit it to people who have software developer or programmer etc as part of their job title and then it's probably below 20 million.

PS: Personally, I rather prefer the most inclusive version which includes people who simply train their outlook to auto sort their mail etc. In the early days of computing there was little that separated users from programmers and I like to think we are heading back in that direction. If for no other reason than I like the idea of the maximum number of people learning how to work though problems logically.

[phillmv]

Fortunately, in this case we're clearly talking about people who understand what source control is and have a desire to use it ;).

[nknight]

And we all know the wildly varying calibre of people with "programmer" or "software engineer" type titles ("Source control? Which key is that?"). I wouldn't be too surprised if it was more like 10% of those capable...