GitHub: hosting the Internet's collaborative projects, making money, and being awfully nice about it

Cory Doctorow 10:29 pm Tue Feb 21, 2012

On Wired, Robert McMillan has an inspiring profile of GitHub, the remarkably successful, self-funded startup that provides a streamlined, easy-to-use version of Git, the version control system beloved by millions. GitHub is a great example of a company that does something simple and well, which scales, doesn't cost much, and improves lots of peoples' lives.

“We don’t keep track of vacation days; we don’t keep track of hours. It doesn’t matter to us,” says CIO Scott Chacon. “I’ve been here at midnight and there are five people here. And I’ve been here in the middle of the day on a Thursday and there’s nobody here.”

And yet it’s the most productive software development team he’s ever worked on, Chacon says.

Preston-Werner’s bet has paid off. GitHub is now profitable. Users can sign up for free and start contributing, but they pay money if they want to privately host code there — starting at $7 per month. GitHub also sells an enterprise product that lets companies run your own version of GitHub behind the corporate firewall. That starts at $5,000 per year, but can cost hundreds of thousands annually for companies with hundreds of coders.

Lord of the Files: How GitHub Tamed Free Software (And More)

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