Comment by cedilla

2 days ago

I don't know if you wanted to imply that, but just to make sure no one misunderstands: GitHub didn't invent git.

I don't know if they were the first git forge, but they were certainly among the first.

12 comments

cedilla

Yeah I know that they didn't. Even though they didn't invent it and don't own it, it's still the cornerstone of the wall that has become the Github empire.

The specific problem is that all the competitors to Github have to use git, and that limits how different they can really be than Github and thus how aggressively they can compete to win users

not_kurt_godel 1 day ago
> The specific problem
Problem for whom? Users who are happy using git? Or conartist86 who is thinking about how to get money?
> the competitors to Github have to use git
Why? Syncing between various VCSes has been a thing since forever. If you can't handle a compatibility layer to support git+new-better-thing, you don't have the technical chops to build new-better-thing in the first place.
- conartist6 1 day ago
  
  I do want forwards compatibility, I don't want backwards compatibility.
  The way I think about it, if I make a backwards compatible product I might end up with users who never really wanted any change at all, and those people would be almost impossible to make happy. Those are the "faster horse" users. What I need is to find the people whose life would be changed by a car!
  
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OJFord 1 day ago
That's like saying the problem for competitors to Uber is that they still have to take customers between the same A and B.
- conartist6 1 day ago
  
  Maybe, but the way they captured the market was by offering a differentiated product. We already had cabs and buses, yes, but Uber wasn't just summoning cabs and selling bus tickets, where they? The core experience was still A to B but Uber discovered that there was a lot more consumer innovation possible within the confines of the A to B problem...
  
  2 replies →