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by spaceribs 47 days ago
Considering the size and scale of Github, do you feel like it's become closer to an infrastructural public good rather than a privately owned product?

The amount of impact I've seen to businesses around the US at least might as well be akin to a Covid shutdown, and that certainly has me thinking about what the overall impacts are on the US economy overall.
2 comments
idan 47 days ago
Caveat, I'm not a lawyer, I don't speak for the company, yadda yadda

It's a product that is _de facto_ present in nearly all developer scenarios. There are scenarios where I personally believe public management is better than private management, e.g. single-payer healthcare is strictly better than the bullshit we have in the US now. It's fundamentally cheaper for the polity when the government negotiates with healthcare providers than each private insurer.

I don't think that's fundamentally the problem facing GitHub, and I don't think it would be better in any way — for anyone — if it were regulated like a utility. But again, I write javascript for a living. Take what I'm saying with a big-ass rock of salt.

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somat 46 days ago
git is an infrastructural public good. github is a company that sells you git adjacent services.

Speaking of git adjacent services. Why did google code end? Was it too hard for them to monetize? I tend to have an aversion for signing up for stuff so have never had an account on either, but they had a lot of momentum. And them shutting down that service feels like the inflection point marking the end of the "don't be evil" period, A lot of open source projects got burned in that one. That or when they bought YouTube instead of developing their own google video further.

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tonfa 46 days ago
> Why did google code end? Was it too hard for them to monetize?

My guess is that abuse (people hosting files/data that google didn't/wasn't allowed to host) made it untenable for a service that wasn't generating revenue and had limited headcount.

Something like Google drive or yt could spend a lot more energy stomping it rather than the handful of folks from the open source programs team.

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