GitHub 101: Everything you need to know about the popular code repository

(Image Courtesy: GitHub)

GitHub Inc., Microsoft's online code repository, has reported that it has crossed 100 million developers on its code hosting platform.

It now has more than 372 million repositories, of which 28 million are public. The company is now the biggest hosting platform for code as of November 2021.

While that sounds great, you may ask yourself, how did it get here, or what is a code repository in the first place? Let's explore GitHub, its history and significance, and where Microsoft fits into the picture.

The development of GitHub began in 2007, and the site was launched in April 2008 after a few months in beta.

The platform was founded by Tom Preston-Werner, an American software developer and entrepreneur, Chris Wanstrath, an American technology entrepreneur, and P.J. Hyett, an American software developer and entrepreneur. The fourth founder was Scott Chacon, also a developer and entrepreneur.

The company was run as a bootstrapped business, funded entirely by its founders. Four years after the company was founded, it raised $100 million in venture capital. In 2015, raised $250 million in venture capital.

By 2018, the company was estimated to be generating $200 to $300 million in recurring revenue.

The company was acquired by Microsoft in 2018 for $7.5 billion. Under the deal, GitHub was allowed to operate independently as a business.

The company initially had a flat organisational structure, which meant no middle managers. Employees were free to work on projects that interested them.

This was changed in 2014 when allegations of harassment were made against senior management, causing Tom Preston-Werner to resign as CEO.

Now that we know a bit about the history of GitHub - let's answer an important question.

In the simplest terms, GitHub is a high-level, cloud-based platform that allows software developers to store and manage code.

At a higher level, it is a repository for software development and version control using a system called Git.

In development, version control refers to a branch of systems for managing and tracking changes in computer applications.

Git is a distributed version control system developed by Finnish software engineer and lead developer on Linux - Linus Torvalds, in 2005.

GitHub is built on this foundation to offer all the features of Git, as well as access control, bug tracking, feature requests, integration and dedicated pages for each project.

The service allows anyone to sign up for an account and host a project. It is also more user-friendly than Git.

GitHub makes money by offering premium subscription plans and the fee it charges when people purchase third-party apps on its platform. It also makes money by selling merchandise.

By 2018, Microsoft was one of the largest organisations managing their projects on GitHub.

It maintained several actively developed private and public repositories on the platform.

When Satya Nadella took over as CEO of Microsoft in 2014, he took the Redmond technology giant in a new direction, focused around cloud-services and mobile computing.

Since they were already heavily invested in GitHub, it made sense to acquire it under its wing. While users were intially worried Microsoft would clamp down on open source projects, it has shown no inclination so far.

The biggest strength of the platform is that it allows users globally to collaborate on a project by making it easy for them to manage.

Since all the code and documentation are stored in one place, it makes it easier for teams to access.

Public open-source projects are the biggest beneficiary here, with the ability for anyone to commit changes or modify files. All of these changes are tracked and shown to the public.

GitHub also allows private repositories, which are locked behind a subscription plan.

The Team plan costs $44 annually per user and allows for advanced collaboration for individuals and companies.

The Enterprise plan costs $231 annually per user and has more security and flexible deployment of code.

Besides these plans, GitHub also offers a service called Copilot. It is an AI-based auto completion tool for coding. It fully supports Python, JavaScript, TypeScript, Ruby, Java and Go.