GitHub
GitHub (/ˈɡɪthʌb/[a]) is a developer platform that allows developers to create, store, manage and share their code. It uses Git software, providing the distributed version control of Git plus access control, bug tracking, software feature requests, task management, continuous integration, and wikis for every project.[7] Headquartered in California, it has been a subsidiary of Microsoft since 2018.[8]
Not to be confused with Git or GitLab.Type of business
Collaborative version control
English
February 8, 2008 (as Logical Awesome LLC)[1]
San Francisco, California, U.S.
Worldwide
- Tom Preston-Werner
- Chris Wanstrath
- P. J. Hyett
- Scott Chacon
- Thomas Dohmke (CEO)
- Mike Taylor (CFO)
- Kyle Daigle (COO)
Collaborative version control (GitHub)
AI development tools (GitHub Copilot)
Blog host (GitHub Pages)
Package repository (NPM)
$1 billion (2022)[2]
5,595[3]
Optional (required for creating and joining repositories)
100 million (as of January 2023)
April 10, 2008
Active
It is commonly used to host open source software development projects.[9] As of January 2023, GitHub reported having over 100 million developers[10] and more than 420 million repositories,[11] including at least 28 million public repositories.[12] It is the world's largest source code host as of June 2023.
About[edit]
Founding[edit]
The development of the GitHub platform began on October 19, 2007.[13][14][15] The site was launched in April 2008 by Tom Preston-Werner, Chris Wanstrath, P. J. Hyett and Scott Chacon after it had been available for a few months as a beta release.[16] GitHub has an annual keynote called GitHub Universe.[17]
Organizational structure[edit]
GitHub, Inc. was originally a flat organization with no middle managers; in other words, "everyone is a manager" (self-management).[18] Employees could choose to work on projects that interested them (open allocation), but the chief executive set salaries. (i.e. Individual or groups of company executive leaders decides on project aims and development, including funding)[19]
In 2014, GitHub, Inc. added a layer of middle management in response to serious harassment allegations against its senior leadership. As a result of the scandal, Tom Preston-Werner resigned from his position as CEO.[20]
Finance[edit]
GitHub was a bootstrapped start-up business, which in its first years provided enough revenue to be funded solely by its three founders and start taking on employees.[21]
In July 2012, four years after the company was founded, Andreessen Horowitz invested $100 million in venture capital.[7] with a $750 million valuation.[22]
In July 2015 GitHub raised another $250 million (~$314 million in 2023) of venture capital in a series B round. The lead investor was Sequoia Capital, and other investors were Andreessen Horowitz, Thrive Capital, IVP (Institutional Venture Partners) and other venture capital funds.[23][24] The round valued the company at approximately $2 billion.[25]
As of 2023, GitHub was estimated to generate $1 billion in revenue.[2]
History[edit]
The GitHub service was developed by Chris Wanstrath, P. J. Hyett, Tom Preston-Werner, and Scott Chacon using Ruby on Rails, and started in February 2008. The company, GitHub, Inc., has existed as of 2007 and is located in San Francisco.[26]
GitHub Archive Program[edit]
In July 2020, GitHub stored a February archive of the site[58] in an abandoned mountain mine in Svalbard, Norway, part of the Arctic World Archive and not far from the Svalbard Global Seed Vault. The archive contained the code of all active public repositories, as well as that of dormant but significant public repositories. The 21TB of data was stored on piqlFilm archival film reels as matrix (2D) barcode (Boxing barcode), and is expected to last 500–1,000 years.[107][108][109][110]
The GitHub Archive Program is also working with partners on Project Silica, in an attempt to store all public repositories for 10,000 years. It aims to write archives into the molecular structure of quartz glass platters, using a high-precision petahertz pulse laser, i.e. one that pulses a quadrillion (1,000,000,000,000,000) times per second.[110]
Reception[edit]
Linus Torvalds, the original developer of the Git software, has highly praised GitHub by stating "The hosting of github [sic] is excellent. They've done a good job on that. I think GitHub should be commended enormously for making open source project hosting so easy." However, he also sharply criticized the implementation of GitHub’s merging interface, stating that "Git comes with a nice pull-request generation module, but GitHub instead decided to replace it with their own totally inferior version. As a result, I consider GitHub useless for these kinds of things. It's fine for hosting, but the pull requests and the online commit editing, are just pure garbage."[144][145]
