The celebrity of Linus definitely helped Git win, and GitHub likely benefited from that by the name alone. Many people today mistakenly equate Git and GitHub, and since GH did such a good job of being a friendly interface to Git, to many people it _is_ Git. They did an early bet on Git alone, at a time when many of its competitors were supporting several VCSs. That early traction set the ball rolling, and now everyone developing in public pretty much has to be on it.
Tangentially: it's a pretty sad state of affairs when the most popular OSS hosting service is not only proprietary, but owned by the company who was historically at opposite ends of the OSS movement. A cynic might say that they're at the extend phase of "embrace, extend, extinguish". Though "extinguish" might not be necessary if it can be replaced by "profit" instead.
I do go into Linux and Linus in the article in some depth, but even Linus credits the Ruby community to a degree with the explosion in popularity of Git, which is fairly clearly due in large part to GitHub. But, it's certainly a chicken/egg question.
I would also argue that MS is nothing like the company that it was 30 years ago when that philosophy was a thing. The truth today is the via GitHub, Microsoft hosts the vast majority of the world's open source software, entirely for free.
>I would also argue that MS is nothing like the company that it was 30 years ago when that philosophy was a thing.
This is like saying that a cannibal has stopped eating people because there have been no disappearances in the last two days. Sure, technically correct, I'd still not eat their curry.
30 years ago your PC was at least your PC, now they shove all kinds of cloud and AI services down the users' throat and put ads where they don't belong.
MS have realized that producing the right kind of important open-source software gives even more strength than producing closed-source software. Hence Typescript, VS Code, a few widespread language servers, etc.
MS has long known developers were critical to their success. For a while they were worried that projects like Linux would take away their market, but it is now clearer to everyone where linux is going and so they don't have to worry as much. (so long as they are not stupid)
> The truth today is the via GitHub, Microsoft hosts the vast majority of the world's open source software, entirely for free.
To be fair, though, y'all did 90% of the work before the acquisition. MS only hosts the vast majority of the world's open source because they backed up dump trucks full of cash at the houses of the people who actually built that capability.
> I would also argue that MS is nothing like the company that it was 30 years ago when that philosophy was a thing.
I don't think I can ever truly trust their motives, though. I will agree that it's a different company in many ways, but their history is still that of a company that, through anti-competitive practices, set personal computing back decades. And worked tirelessly to keep open source at bay where they could.
At this point MS realizes it's more profitable to work along side open source than against it. If at any point they no longer believe that's the case, you better believe we'll see a reversion to their former behavior.
Github won, not because of taste, but also because of providence and comms. The whole article is written from someone looking out, not in - you can't play a football match and watch it.
For the rest of the world, Github came along when blogs and rss feeds were also close to their zenith. IIRC Github used to employ a rather sweary chap that used to blog a lot, and he appeared in everyone's feeds that I knew of promoting github.
Whereas, Bitbucket, and FogCreek's kiln had little comparable publicity or comms.
There was concern actually. We debated a bit the concept of naming the company "GitHub", since "git" is baked into the company name. We worried a little about what happens when the next big VCS thing comes along, not knowing that it's going to be dominant for at least the next 20 years.
I didn't say it was. If anything, it's preferable to "extinguish". :)
Though a core philosophy behind the OSS movement is creating software for the benefit of humanity, instead of driven by financial reasons. Not that developers shouldn't profit from their work, but it's ironic that a large corporation who was historically strongly opposed to the movement is now a leader in it. It's understandable to question their motives if you remember the history, regardless of their image today.
I believe that the only sustainable model for software that benefits the humanity has to have a profit motive. Even a delayed one, as in the case of the universities and government grants.
But certainly the free software movement has provided incalculable benefits to humanity, where their authors were not chasing profits. The only reason this is unsustainable _in some cases_ is because we haven't established a good model to support this work yet. There are some attempts with varying success, but even in its current state, I would argue that more good is produced with this model than with one whose primary goal is profit.
Tangentially: it's a pretty sad state of affairs when the most popular OSS hosting service is not only proprietary, but owned by the company who was historically at opposite ends of the OSS movement. A cynic might say that they're at the extend phase of "embrace, extend, extinguish". Though "extinguish" might not be necessary if it can be replaced by "profit" instead.