Subject: Re: git-scm.com

From: Junio C Hamano <[email-masked]>
Date: Mon, 28 Jul 2008 14:42:41 -0700

Johannes Schindelin <[email-masked]> writes:

> On Sun, 27 Jul 2008, Tom Werner wrote:
>
>> I find it a bit confusing that some here seem to have a strong dislike 
>> for GitHub. It's true that we haven't been active on the developer list 
>> or in the #git channel on freenode, but we are constantly in #github and 
>> have answered a *great* many questions from developers that are new to 
>> git.
>
> Speaking for myself, I will probably direct some users from #git to 
> #github, then.

I saw more than several times that people asked github specific questions
on #git; when they were lucky, there was somebody who knew github and they
got necessary help.  Otherwise the answer was "eh, sorry, that's a closed
service and we cannot help diagnosing the problem you are having".  It
would have been the right way to help them to refer to the #github support
channel.

If a company can fund somebody to help new users with git problems on #git
while helping people with github problems on #github, that would be a good
gesture towards the git community, I'd suppose.

> Also note that one of the major gripe with you making money off of Git 
> could be the following: we have over 500 contributors, and most of them -- 
> first and foremost of all, the two major contributors, Junio and Shawn -- 
> cannot make money from Git.  Envy is wrong, but it is real.

I do not talk for Shawn, but I think that comment misses the mark by a
large margin, at least for me.

I haven't been in this for money.  The original motivation of my
involvement was to help sending Linus back to the kernel as quickly as
possible, but now I primarily do this for fun.  Doing it for money would
risk removing the fun factor.

What I personally lack right now is time and mental bandwidth.

Active contributers of all kinds, ranging from "C coders", "scripters", to
"Documentation people" and "dropped patch naggers", have been helping me
quite a lot.  Corporate sponsors that can pay back in money but not in
patches may be able to find other ways to help us, but I do not offhand
know what's the most effective way for them to do so if they wanted to.