I don't think anyone really believes that startups can move faster than large corporations.
Startups can merely fully dedicate themselves to exploring new spaces that open up because they're not burdened by things such as being already occupied with doing something, especially something that's profitable.
So when something new appears like VR/AR a startup can jump right in at first opportunity without having to think too much about it. This has the potential to be an advantage and means that startups are "faster" (really just earlier) to certain things.
Github is a profitable business that has nothing to do with editors, so I'd argue that it's not a startup anyway, certainly not in any far that gives them advantage in developing editors or IDEs.
Quite frankly I really don't get why they even bother. It doesn't differentiate their actual business in any useful way and it doesn't make money. In the meantime they're actually facing competition from Gitlab, a company that's adding features so powerful you can and other people have build entire business around them.
> Quite frankly I really don't get why they even bother
I've asked this in the past and all that I could gather was, this is about mindshare.
With regards to GitLab, if they (GitHub) aren't talking about them in weekly meetings, they really should; because last week was the first time that I really thought GitHub, may be in serious trouble. With GitLab's recent UI changes, it looks like they are finally finding their UI groove. It's still rough in some areas, but it looks like they have the resources to improve things.
I don't necessary think GitLab, will be the ones that will usurp GitHub, but what I think GitLab can and probably will do, is seriously devalue GitHub's value proposition. That is, turn Git hosting into a commodity product.
Linkedin says GitHub has 501-1000 employees and if I've read things correctly, they have 2 people working on their search. This means they are dedicating 0.4% of their man power to maintaining and advancing their search technology. Search is one of the things that Enterprise will actually pay for, if it works well.
If history has shown us anything, Microsoft is not shy about creating loss leaders, to get people to use complimentary products in their portfolio. GitHub's entire business model right now, revolves around hosting code. Microsoft and Atlassian have complimentary products that can see Git Hosting become a loss leader, that is, a commodity product.
Other than "Social programming", I really don't know what else GitHub is focused on. And unless I'm really out of touch with today's programmers, I would say 80% of programmers, program because it pays well and not because they are passionate about programming. What I think the vast majority of programmers want, is to be able to leave work on time and this is where I think GitHub should really be throwing resources at. And I'm not sure how a free editor is going to convince people that they need/want to host and pay for code hosting.
I thought about them doing it for mindshare. However people can be very opinionated about editors especially outside of the enterprise and they're not competing with any IDEs. There's just fundamentally not a lot of mindshare to grab here.
They also already have a ton of it. If they want to grab more mindshare, they should significantly improve their education offering. The free plan is nice but doesn't make anyone (want to) use it. They're a few systems for assignments that use SVN to submit assignments, the ones I've used at university all sucked. Create a significantly better solution here and every single computer science student becomes aware of Github.
In any case working on mindshare is an investment in the future, if you're ahead of your competition and can maintain your position relative to them it makes sense to work on mindshare. This is not the case for Github at least not anymore.
Coca-cola is good example of why it's not a bad idea to invest in mindshare, even when you are an incumbent in a particular space. If the atom editor was blowing peoples mind away, I would think it makes perfect sense to keep investing in atom, but the pattern today is:
- A new version of atom is released and the top voted comment is "Why is it so slow compared to vscode".
- A new version of vscode is releases and the top voted comment is "Why is atom so slow compared to vscode"
With Coco-cola, you are reinforcing an intangible belief, plus your target audience is pretty diverse and suggestible (not the smartest). Mindshare also works with Apple, since they also have a very diverse and suggestible consumer base.
The atom editor is a power tool and its job, is not to help you watch a movie, satisfy a craving, etc. Its purpose is to help you be more productive and when it comes to productivity, it can be measured and this is where Microsoft really threw a wrench into their plans.
Starting the atom editor wasn't a bad move, but with Microsoft's current strategy with vscode, I would think it's time to cut your losses and focus on more immediate needs, like fending off GitLab and hardening your core competencies.
I don't know how many people, out of their 500+ plus employees are working on atom, but I would have to imagine, using their resources to make an enterprise grade issue tracking and wiki/content management system would be a wiser choice.
i know i am bugging my CTO staff to change to gitlab or pretty much anything else that is not github enterprise just because for me, github is a diff viewer, absolutely nothing else (specially here since i can't use the issues or wiki pages)
