Organizational Details

• GitHub is a Corporation Registered in the State of Delaware
• GitHub was founded, April 10th, 2008
• GitHub's Founding Fathers:
  • Tom Preston-Werner
  • Chris Wanstrath
  • PJ Hyett

• All of the original founders are still active with the exception of Tom Preston-Werner.
  • He left GitHub in 2014 after confirmed harassment allegations
• GitHub is a private corporation and isn't publically traded
• GitHub has acquired the following companies:
  • Easel - In Browser Web Design Tool Built for Collaboration
  • Ordered List - Gauges, Speaker Deck, Harmony

• GitHub hasn't invested in any other companies
• Interestingly enough the first investment in GitHub was for $100M
• GitHub has 267 employees, some of which work at their HQ: 88 Colin P Kelly Jr St (at Brannan St), San Francisco, CA 94107, United States

• GitHub doesn't have any other locations

• http://github.com

• http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/GitHub

• GitHub does not have any annual reports

Communications

Social media for GitHub

• Twitter: https://twitter.com/github
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/githubstatus (Downtime reporting)
• LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/github

Communications channels for GitHub

• GitHub’s press page lists all of their awards that they have received. (https://github.com/about/press)
• GitHub also has a blog that has lots of interesting posts. (https://github.com/blog)
• They also include a Glossary so writes can better report about what the company does. (https://help.github.com/articles/github-glossary/)

GitHub Conference Participation

• GitHub hosts “GitHub Universe” which is their own conference about working on open source projects as well as gathering tons of people working in open source. (http://githubuniverse.com/)
• GitHub also hosts “CodeConf” a two day conference about open source, best practices, documentation, and collaboration. (http://codeconf.com/)
• GitHub also attends several other conferences including GDC. (https://github.com/blog/1961-see-you-at-gdc)

Community Architecture

Github and Government

• Website: http://government.github.com
• Repository: http://github.com/github/government.github.com
• The project is entirely documentation

• Github and Government is a website dedicated to sharing open government efforts that involve Github
• Started January 20, 2013, most recent commit March 5, 2015
• Two people (benbalter and jlord) accept all of the pull requests
• benbalter and jlord seem to be the only two maintainers (BDFLs)
• The original developers have remained with the project the entire time.

• Development has been active throughout its lifetime
• The project would continue fine if one of the two main devs were eaten by a velociraptor
  • Not if the top 20% of the contributors were in a freak bus accident, though - that includes both BDFLs
• No onboarding, since most of it is adding information instead of code

• Ruled by a pair of individuals who try to make sure data is complete and accurate
• Is this the kind of structure you would enjoy working in? Why, or why not?
• This structure is well-suited for this project, but maybe not for a code-based project

Technology/Product

The Technology Behind GitHub

GitHub is powered completely by Git, a distributed source control system.

• Git was originally started by Linus Torvalds, creator of the Linux kernel.
• Git was initially started to track the Linux kernel and was then used by other projects.
• Lots of people interested in working on the same set of files or tracking changes in files could potentially use Git.

GitHub Using Git

• Created to be a highly distributed SCM, GitHub based their entire product on using Git.
• GitHub now uses git as the tool it uses to track most of their repos and interface with GitHub.
• Contrary to popular belief, Git existed before GitHub. GitHub created a nice visual front end and a great central area for code repos.

Copyright Law and Creation of Git

• The Linux kernel was originally tracked in BitKeeper, a properitary SCM.
• Devs of BitKeeper resciended license to use it and the kernel was left in the cold.
• Linus became fed up and created his own that would be FOSS so that incident could never happen again.

Controversy over GitHub and Copyright

• GitHub is not open source, leading to an ironic situation that one of the most central sites for FOSS software isn’t FOSS itself.
• GitHub also has a default license that has been controversial over some of its terms.