Github is among the best things that ever happened to OSS. Compared to anything that came before, it is a pleasure to browse, it is intuitive, and it has managed to corral millions of people with vastly different backgrounds into a golden age of OSS productivity.
In the 10 years+ before Github, I never even tried to contribute code–each project had its own workflow, and sending an email somehow felt intimidating. Today, spending an hour here or there to improve it slightly has almost become a guilty pleasure.
So, I guess what I'm saying is: Thank you!
Forbes is ad-infested hell, here is an Outline link:
When I was at GitHub Satellite last year in Amsterdam, I saw Chris walk in to the venue and look around at the amazing production and smile. You could tell how proud he was of his team and the brand he helped create. I am glad to see he is staying with the company, I'm sure the new CEO will need his advice from time to time to keep GitHub great for the next 10 years.
Why the title change? As far as I can tell, it's factually incorrect, as well.
Wanstrath is planning on stepping down and hasn't stepped down yet.
Any other way of viewing this story? On my iPad with Focus, I just get a blurred out screen when I visit Forbes.com now. I remember it used to show a 'please turn off your ad blocker' dismissible splash screen, but that seems to not be the case any more.
I've never met the guy but have a ton of respect for his work - his open source projects like Resque and pjax were awesome for their time. I imagine GitHub has benefited a lot from having real coders at the helm for so long.
> Wanstrath plans to focus on product strategy and the GitHub community after stepping down from the CEO role, working directly on products and meeting with customers.
Just a theory, perhaps they bringing in a new professional CEO for an IPO?
> GitHub may seek to become more of a marketplace that can help developers show off their work and take on additional projects, with GitHub taking a portion as a fee, says Sequoia investor Jim Goetz.
They already have a Marketplace offering.
Chris is one of the few well-known developers who conveys a deep love of software engineering. Looking forward to reading some of the code he writes in the coming months.
The title is misleading. He plans to, but hasn't!
Good! One of the biggest jerks on Twitter.
Good. Hopefully his replacement doesn't share the same SJW values and significantly changes that part of the company culture.
Wrong title
Random story about Chris...
I saw him speak at a startup event in 2010 at MIT called Startup Bootcamp. It was probably my first startup-related conference and he was the first talk in the kick off slot at 9am. He gave a great talk recapping the origin of GitHub and how it grew out of another projected called FamSpam, a social network for families.
After the talk I had to run to the restroom and happened to run into Chris out in the entry way. I introduce myself and we starting chatting. As we were talking, people started walking into the event late. They saw us standing in the entrance, and started asking questions on where to go.
Instead of deferring responsibility to someone working at the event, Chris sat down at the empty welcome table and started checking people in by giving them schedules and helping them create name tags. We ended up checking in a few dozen people together while we talked more. No one knew who Chris was when they walked in, and just assumed he was a member of the event staff. I think had they known he was the co-founder of GitHub they probably would have paid more attention to him.
I ended up sending him a t-shirt and he took the time to shoot me back an email saying thanks. The subject line was "Dude" and the text was "Got the shirt. It's so awesome. You rock. Tell your brother yo, too!"
Anyways, I just thought it was kind of cool he took it upon himself to help out with checking people in at the event even though he had volunteered to travel all the way to Boston to speak for free to help out young, aspiring entrepreneurs by sharing his learnings. It always kind of stuck with me that you need to stay down to earth and pay it forward no matter how successful you get.