Under Microsoft, GitHub Reaches 100M-Developer Milestone

"Code-hosting platform GitHub has announced that 100 million developers are now using the platform," reports TechCrunch: The figure represents a substantial hike on the 3 million users GitHub counted 10 years ago, the 28 million it claimed when Microsoft acquired it for $7.5 billion five years ago and the 90 million-plus it revealed just three months ago.

GitHub has come a long way since its launch back in 2008, and now serves as the default hosting service for millions of open source and proprietary software projects, allowing developers to collaborate around shared codebases from disparate locations.
GitHub's announcement argues that "From creating the pull request to empowering developers with AI through GitHub Copilot, everything we do has been to put the developer first."

But TechCrunch notes that GitHub's various paid plans "now contribute around $1 billion annually to [Microsoft's] coffers."

Correction: Dispute Microsoft incompetence

[ClueHammer]

GitHub Reaches 100M-Developer Milestone. How many times have they broken GitHub since taking over? to many time to count! /. please stop trying to bullshit us.

Hmm...

[paradigm82]

So 1 in 80 of the whole world population is a developer... and with a GitHub account? And this is including all countries (developing and developed) and age groups (from newborn to old). It surprises me it is this high. Makes me wonder why so many developers are needed, considering that software is something that can be copied and hence should scale much slower than linearly with population.

Re:Hmm...

[ClueHammer]

You require a github account to report issues on other github projects. So basically they are saying there are 100M complaining users out there, a small portion of whom are actually developers.

Re:

[drinkypoo]

You require a github account to report issues on other github projects. So basically they are saying there are 100M complaining users out there, a small portion of whom are actually developers.

Yep, they should only count users who have made at least one commit if they want us to believe they're counting developers.

Re: 100 million developers

[troon]

I'm 50 and have a GitHub account.

Re: 100 million developers

[JoeRobe]

This reports 46% of developers are over 40.

https://www.zippia.com/softwar... [zippia.com]

But let's say the vast majority are https://ourworldindata.org/gra...

So now we're at 100M out of 5000M, or 2% of the worlds potential developer population is actually developing and doing so using GitHub.

There are other estimates of global developer population, claiming about 28 million developers worldwide, well below 100 million GitHub "users":

https://www.statista.com/stati... [statista.com]

All of this is to say that estimates of developers worl

Re:

[znrt]

this is advertising/clickbait for techcrunch+, which in turn is fabricating "tech news" from some autopromotion "blog post" from github. nothing to see here.

mind you, i think github is an excellent platform, but i think regular users here should be aware by now of how /. operates and how to interpret 90% of their "news for nerds". unless you're all hired trolls, that is ... :O)

Re:

[paulpach]

So 1 in 80 of the whole world population is a developer... and with a GitHub account?

No, all they claim is that there are 100M accounts.

1) It is entirely possible and likely that there are people with multiple GitHub accounts.
2) If all those 100M accounts were individuals and were still alive, then sure, 1 out of 80, but some of them have already died.
3) I bet the majority of those accounts have never written a line of code in their life. They simply signed up to file a bug report or something.
4) Some accounts are for bots.

So no, nobody claimed that 1 out of 80 people are developers.

Re: Hmm...

[JoeRobe]

Straight from their blog:

"There are now 100 million developers around the world using GitHub"

So yeah, they are claiming 100 million developers, not 100 million accounts. And "using" implies current users, not past and present users, or stale accounts.

Definition of developer according to GitHub

[roskakori]

So 1 in 80 of the whole world population is a developer... and with a GitHub account?

According to TFA, they have their own definition of the term developer:

Today, developers are no longer just people building software for technology companies. They're an increasingly diverse and global group of people working across industries, tinkering with code, design, and docs in their free time, contributing to open source projects, conducting scientific research, and more.

I would also be interested in the number

Re:

[gweihir]

The explanation is simply that this number is grossly inflated.

How many of these

[Anonymous Coward]

How many of these "100M developers" are actually code.org kids who signed up because the course requires it?

Anybody sane jumped ship long ago, so short of terminal stupidity, github only gets used because of some external requirement, like a course, or an employer, or what have you. Anybody feel like figuring this one out? Should be a nice diversion from trawling the thing for access credentials.

Probably about half that number

[greytree]

How many people have a personal account and a work account, not to mention other special-purpose or hardly-used accounts ?

Re:

[NobleNobbler]

I think they make a big chunk of cash from github enterprise which ironically is having corporations leave azure boards behind

Re:

[NobleNobbler]

Woops, meant azure repos there

Re:

[jmccue]

I wonder how many users GitHub would have if they were not acquired by Microsoft. Probably twice that number.

Re:

[thegarbz]

How many people have a personal account and a work account

Is it relevant? As far as I'm concerned if you do development for work and for personal reasons it counts for two. You are after all developing different things under different direction for different purposes.

Re:

[_merlin]

I have three accounts for different purposes.

Re:

[Daina.0]

I might have 3 or 4 accounts set up for working for different employers. I've forgotten. None were ever used. All abandoned. Don't really care.

I have an account.

[xack]

I haven't programmed in years, and never for money. But I probably "count" as "developer" anyway. Github requires an account for beta builds of some software so that's where a lot of the accounts come from.

If you're a code developer...

[Big Hairy Gorilla]

You know enough to run your own repo.

What??? You were lazy and trusted someone with your source code? And now your code is showing up in co pilot??

Oops.

How do they count?

[Misagon]

I have a Github account, that I have never uploaded any project to because of Copilot. Instead I show an explanation of why my account is dormant.

But I have contributed a few bug reports using that account. So, does that mean that they count me as an "active developer" then?

Quality over Quantity.

[Fly Swatter]

Something modern development appears to completely ignore.

Re:

[gweihir]

Quality, KISS, maintainability, safety, security, etc.

You can simply list all good development practices and see all of them ignored by modern "developers". Of course the price to pay for that is horrendous in the long term and we already starr to pay it.

So 100M "MS quality level" developers?

[gweihir]

I fail to see how that is positive.

Stale accounts

[sdinfoserv]

How many abandoned projects and accounts are there?... I seem to remember a large number of developers saying the would walk away if purchased by Micro$oft.

Another page from Steve Ballmer's playbook

[Bu11etmagnet]

Developers! Developers! Developers! Developers!