The head of GitHub spoke about the future of programming and new educational projects of the company

On the GitHub website, you can place the open source code of your program, after which other users can join the development. On the site, you can take the necessary code snippets to create a new IT product and refine them, reducing the time to develop the product. GitHub is often called a social network for programmers and developers.

On September 24, GitHub introduced a new Open Source- Classroom product designed for software development training.

The head of GitHub, Chris Vanstras, told RBC about the future of software development, about the business model of the service, about its geography, about new products and educational projects.
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"Megamind" leads the most interesting quotes from the interview .

About the idea of ​​creating GitHub

We did a project for friends and colleagues and were not going to make a platform for all programmers in the world: we just wanted to create a place where it would be easy to share the program code. But suddenly it turned out that people like our project and they are ready not only to use it themselves, but also to share a link to it with friends. At this point, GitHub began to grow sharply. And I didn’t have any idea what kind of global thing we launched.

Github Geography and Expansion

[At GitHub] About 10 million users, and their number is growing rapidly. North America brings GitHub a very small percentage of traffic. I don’t remember exact numbers, but, for example, Russia is always in the top 10 among the countries in the world, and in Europe - in fourth place, after Great Britain, France and Germany. We are a global community and we want our company structure to reflect this.

There are about 26 million projects on GitHub. As for businesses, we have millions of customers, from IBM and Microsoft to startups. People on GitHub work from around the world. We have over 300 employees. About 60% of them work remotely - at home, in coworkings and so on. Some people don’t have a home at all - they move every month just by traveling around the planet.

About competitors

We work in several business areas at once - in hosting, in the field of collaborative software (the so-called enterprise collaborative space, in which different companies use different products to create software within a common system). Finally, we enter the territory of software development tools - the code can be written in our Atom product.

There are thousands of similar services: some are free, some need to be paid [for example, Apple has its own development environment, Xcode, and Microsoft has Microsoft Visual Studio]. I like the fact that in the field of programming, everyone is somehow connected. We compete with Microsoft editor, at the same time Microsoft publishes its code on GitHub. All our competitors are in a sense at the same time our allies.

Open source projects publish very few services. There used to be Google Code, but the project was closed. SourceForge is our competitor, but we see that more and more people are switching from it to GitHub. They are very far from the number of projects that we host.

About business model

Since April 2009, our model has not changed. It lies in the fact that everything available to the public, we host for free, and the closed code is published for money. We developed separate products for business, but the foundation of our business model was laid initially and has been preserved until now.

About investment

We have become profitable from day one. We attracted investments to hire new employees and launch new products.

We chose Andreessen Horowitz for many reasons. They can offer a wealth of services that help companies grow. If we need help with PR, marketing, recruiting or sales, we can go to them. And in other funds you can apply only to one partner of the fund, which is on the board of directors of your company. And at Andreessen Horowitz, you can contact each of the hundreds of employees.

By the way, a few months ago we closed the second round from Andreessen Horowitz [in July 2015, GitHub raised $ 250 million from the funds of Sequoia Capital , Andreessen Horowitz, Institutional Venture Partners ( IVP ), Thrive Capital , and also from Andreessen Horowitz's partner Peter Levin].

About new projects

We recently released GitHub Desktop, a Mac and Windows client that can be downloaded and installed on a computer. Using it is very easy to use GitHub. Of course, we do not think that every GitHub user will download it, but those who use it will surely love it. GitHub Desktop is absolutely free, the number of downloaded copies is unlimited.

Traditionally, GitHub worked on the web - you visit Github.com, and this is the site. Now we have both a corporate product GitHub and an open source product. We want to work in different environments.

When you use Windows, you don’t always want to go into the browser: you want to get a product built into your computer experience. The thing must know who you are, what options you have configured. I do not think that everything will move to the web due to the popularity of cloud technologies. It seems to me that more and more downloaded programs will perform calculations in the cloud.

I think the future is behind this - software installed on computers and computing power in the cloud.

About why companies began to open source code

The question is why they have not done this before! It's all about fear, in uncertainty. And there are millions of reasons for opening a code: it’s easier to search for talents, it’s so convenient to work and share with other companies, you can spend less time developing, building your code on someone else’s practices ... Companies can build an ecosystem and win the minds and hearts of developers.

Previously, people thought: "Let's close the code, because we are making money on it." Now they understand that the code must be opened in order to earn even more money. Therefore, for example, Apple opens Swift. In the end, in the closed code can not find bugs.

About GitHub educational projects

Yes, we have 200,500 registered students today. In addition to students, we have teachers who give lessons on GitHub. Students do different projects, even robots. Now the real wave of young programmers is rising. C using this skill can do so many interesting things.

We are trying to help start programming people who do not have access to resources like oursera . We are closer, for example, Code2040 [a project that provides access to the IT sphere for ethnic minorities]. I believe that it is important to give the opportunity to work to people who do not have such an opportunity, and not to train those who are interested. There are a lot of people who grew up with a computer in their hands in the basement, like me, but we decided to go even lower down the stairs. Until now, even in the US, millions of people do not have access to the Internet.

We entered into a partnership with the Department of Housing and Urban Development and in the summer announced the ConnectHome program. The task is to provide free Internet access in the field of social housing. While this is a pilot project. We want people to grow up in an environment where the Internet is constantly present and you can work without going to McDonald's in search of Wi-Fi. And after that, people can go to Coursera.