Comment by bsimpson
2 days ago
From a product POV, GitHub seems like a solved problem. It's been working well-enough with the current feature set for over a decade, with many companies building themselves on top of its stack. If they stagnate in MS bureaucracy but keep the lights on for push/pull/PRs, that's probably good enough for most people until something completely changes how software is made.
The problem is that someone still has to polish their resume when working for GitHub (aka resume-driven development), so, they're actually making GitHub worse now:
Why is GitHub UI getting slower? - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=44799861 - Aug 2025 (113 comments)
Dear GitHub wasn't all that long ago https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10904671
I think GitHub also doesn't have the same vendor lock-in that other companies do. I am very happy with their service, and I wouldn't want to move off of it. But at the same time there are numerous alternatives and it wouldn't be that hard to switch. Because, as you say, it is pretty much a solved problem, and because of that there are several competitors with feature parity at this point.
At this point you are fighting, "Nobody got fired for buying Microsoft." There are viable alternatives on the market, but GitHub is the known quantity for which conversations are required to use something different.
Right now there just isn't any incentive to move off of GitHub. GitHub is cheap, and it provides a very familiar, extensible, and reliable service.
My point is more that if Microsoft did dig their heels in and make the product worse, it would be very easy for people to switch. Some people would stay because it is the de facto standard, but I think a lot more people than you think would switch, because the switching costs are so low.
My hope is that this acts as a strong enough incentive for them to maintain the quality of GitHub, so we don't have to switch.