According to the operator, GitHub “officially” has 100 million users. The platform for version management thus achieves the goal set four years ago for 2025 much earlier than planned. Compared to when the platform was launched fifteen years ago, the user base is also much more globally distributed.
However, the number of people actively using GitHub is likely to be lower since the accounts are linked to email and it is not uncommon to use more than one account. It is also not clear how many of the accounts are actually active.
From the founding to the Microsoft subsidiary
GitHub was born out of the idea of offering a platform for the version control system Git, which is widespread today but still underrepresented at the time. Linus Torvalds started Git in 2005 because he was dissatisfied with other version control systems. Work on the GitHub platform began in 2007. After a beta phase, the official starting signal was given on April 10, 2008.
Public repositories are free, while there are commercial offerings for businesses. GitHub received investments of $100 million and $250 million in 2012 and 2015, respectively. The company was valued at $2 billion in the 2015 financing round.
Three years later, Microsoft paid $7.5 billion to acquire the version control platform. At that time, Xamarin founder Nat Friedman became the CEO of GitHub. He emphasized that the platform should remain independent even after the takeover. Two years later, GitHub bought the JavaScript package manager npm.
Global distribution
Five years after launch, GitHub had three million developers (or accounts). By the tenth birthday it was 27 million. At the in-house developer conference GitHub Universe, Friedman announced the goal that has now been reached of reaching 100 million developers by 2025.
Germany ranks seventh in global growth, and Russia shares fourth place with Indonesia.
(Image: GitHub)
According to GitHub, global distribution has increased significantly in recent years. In 2015, around a third of users were based in North America. In 2022, the number of users had skyrocketed, especially in India, China and Brazil. In India, GitHub counts about 10 million accounts, of which 2.5 million were added in 2022. GitHub remains open to Russian developers.
More details can be found on the GitHub blog.
(rme)
