
GitHub Hits 1,000,000 users - bkbleikamp
https://github.com/blog/936-one-million
======
xorglorb
They provide a great service, and I use them all the time, but I don't like
how their pricing scheme works for freelancers. You end up with a million
small private repositories, and BitBucket has much more reasonable options.

~~~
KVFinn
Yeah, it's ridiculous. I have enough repos that I'd need the Platinum 200
dollar a month plan.

All the repos are small and most are updated once or twice a year -- but the
pricing is the same as if I had a whole team of people pushing to github every
day.

~~~
icebraining
But what's the point of having those on Github anyway? GH is great for teams
or for sharing your code with 'the community', but I don't see what it buys
you for private, single developer projects over a directory in your drive(s).

~~~
Pyrodogg
Code availability from anywhere without having to manage your own repo server.

Even for a single dev it might be worth it to be able to check out to your
normal dev workstation, your laptop, and even on a totally random pc when the
need arises. It also allows you to checkup on things through the web when a pc
to checkout on isn't available.

~~~
ConstantineXVI
A git server (at least on a personal scope) requires close to zero management.
Fire up an Ubuntu box on Linode or such, `sudo apt-get install git`, boom,
there's your server. A git server is nothing more than "filesystem + SSH +
git".

Not to say GitHub doesn't make it even more convenient, but the DIY option
isn't exactly difficult either.

~~~
wheels
Gitosis also takes like all of 5 minutes to set up and then you've got
repositories that you can collaborate on and manage permissions between
projects.

[http://scie.nti.st/2007/11/14/hosting-git-repositories-
the-e...](http://scie.nti.st/2007/11/14/hosting-git-repositories-the-easy-and-
secure-way)

I set up our repo hosting using Gitosis a few years back and haven't had to
think about it since. Accounts are also managed via a special repo so even
that is done over git.

You could also put your collection of repositories on your Dropbox and clone
from / push to there.

~~~
edcrfv
Gitolite is a better tool, with more options. It's easier to manage who gets
access to what as well with gitolite.

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guelo
Wow, that number almost doesn't seem believable. A million people must be a
good chunk of all programmers in the world. This Wikipedia article[1] says
there are 612,000 programmers in the US and 522,000 in India. Admittedly old
incomplete data but it's easy to see how a million people might be 10-20% of
all programmers worldwide. In corporate drone offices I've been in my guess is
maybe 10% of programmers have even heard of git.

[1]
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_engineering_demographi...](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Software_engineering_demographics)

~~~
shabble
Do you need an account to be able to report issues or watch projects?
Interested bystanders and responsible bug-reporting OSS citizens may account
for some of that.

I wonder how many of those accounts have active repos of their own?

~~~
Zev
I would wonder how many of those accounts have pushed to a repo recently, not
just their own (in cases where people work for a company/on a project that has
a GitHub organization).

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pestaa
I'm very happy for their success, I really see GitHub as one of the most
rapidly evolving services; my only wish is for BitBucket to receive the same
care.

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zoul
I love GitHub and when our company recently migrated its code to Git, we were
much interested in hosting the code on GitHub. I was surprised that they have
a repository size limit, or more precisely I was surprised by how low the
limit is. They have no hard quota, but they "don't recommend repository size
over 1GB". Plans don't make a difference.

We're a small four-people workshop, but our repos are easily several gigabytes
in size because of the artworks, source photos and similar stuff. We would
probably have squeezed under their limit, but did not want to live under the
constant threat of growing out of it.

So, I love GitHub, will continue using it for my public stuff, but I am
surprised you can't easily host 10-15 GBs of private code even though you're
willing to pay $50 a month for it.

------
frisco
How are they measuring users here? Is this all-time-registrations? Or
"actives"? Because if this is registrations, I thought they were a lot bigger
already. Regardless, awesome!

~~~
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...](http://stackoverflow.com/questions/453880/how-many-developers-
are-there-in-the-world)

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 ;).

------
prudhvis
Github is the best place for Social Coding. Can't tell you how easy it is to
manage a Repository being a Release Engineer with Github.

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bprater
Well deserved. The team has consistently brought the kinds of functionality we
need as developers since they launched the service. Kudos guys!

------
dasil003
This made me curious what my user number was. You can see it on your Account
page source:

<https://skitch.com/e-dasil003/f5nx6/safari>

Unfortunately I couldn't figure out a way to explore user numbers like going
to /users/5603 for example. That is actually the route for DELETEing your
account, but it doesn't have a GET redirect or anything.

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derwiki
".. and as a gift to you all, we'll be building side by side diffs!"

(j/k -- congrats to the Github team, you can pry my account from my cold dead
hands)

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frabcus
If anyone's interested in their growth curve, this scraper of their search
engine using date ranges gives you figures for their number of users every
month since they started.
<https://scraperwiki.com/scrapers/github_users_each_year/>

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thomasfl
If you don't like GitHubs pricing model, just download and install Gitorious
on your own server. It's open source.

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bambax
When was this reached? I setup an account a few hours ago and have to wonder
if I am the millionth user?? ;-)

~~~
technoweenie
It wasn't you, we already contacted the 1 millionth user. Nice try though!

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thedjpetersen
Good work GitHub team! Using github as part of my workflow has greatly helped
my efficiency. Their interface makes reviewing code and making comments much
easier.

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bad_user
GitHub is basically the Facebook of software developers and I think it is
eating LinkedIn's launch.

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karlzt
such a coincidence that this happens the day I created a Bitbucket account :)

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jcborro
How many users does the biggest public SVN repo have?

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bitops
Well done GitHub! Keep up the good work.

