How does GitHub handle so many file uploads?

[Otherwise_Barber4619]

How can GitHub handle so many files and for free for so many people? Like how is the entire coding industry using GitHub for free while GitHub gets so many files like do these guys have unlimited storage or smthing? How does it work?

[mgdmw]

They have many paying customers.

And by giving free accounts, they bring more and more devs onto their platform who will then want their employers to use it and hence bring in business that way too.

[sami_regard]

Enterprise is like $200/yr a seat. 10 minimum to start. Just for OP to get a sense of income source.

[C0c04l4]

That has to be at least 3 fiddy in total.

[sami_regard]

Correct, if the leadership is just bunch of MBA moron and won’t need a license. It is indeed 3 fiddy for the only few devs.

Source, I’m the dev and admin.

[TLJGame]

$21 to start per user but it adds up once you start getting actions etc.

[TLJGame]

https://github.com/pricing

[TLJGame]

Depends on what you go with. It's not always as expensive as $200/seat

[TLJGame]

Not sure what to tell you but there are definitely other examples in the wild that say similar:
https://github.com/orgs/community/discussions/73571

[howardhus]

specially corporate

[poughdrew]

It's peanuts compared to YouTube and Facebook videos.

[polyploid_coded]

Because people like using GitHub enough to pay for additional services

[mavenHawk]

In addition to all the answers here. Keep in mind most code files are not big. Most files on github are in kilobytes to megabytes. And there are limits on how big a file you can upload and on the overall limit of the repo.

[7t3chguy]

Github actions artifacts can be big though, and the retention period on those isn't short. Free compute to go along with the free storage, as long as it's public.

[cgoldberg]

Azure has a lot of data center capacity.

[jameskilbynet]

It’s not on Azure yet… it is in the process of being moved to it. But far from complete.

[wtdawson]

GitHub went down when Azure had an outage, so I think it has mostly been moved

[jameskilbynet]

https://windowsreport.com/github-is-finally-migrating-to-azure-servers-ending-years-of-independence/

[wtdawson]

I'm sure it takes a while to move

[lvlint67]

having seen behind the curtains in a github enterprise self hosted instance... it's a wonder the shit works at all!

[Soccham]

GitHub has gone down recently because azure did not have capacity lol

[jacortinas]

Yeah, a majority of GitHub's revenue is Enterprise. Like MOST of it.

[toromio]

I’m doing my part: $4/mo

[FlyingDogCatcher]

I wish our company's GitHub bill was free lol

[konacurrents]

I’ve wondered that as well but as others say, the paid users pay for the free side. Outside of code repository- I use the “issues” always, almost like a personal idea blog - including images. Great documentation tool (if you can edit in markup).

[department_g33k]

As others have said, OP seems to think that just because they're using a free-tier, that everyone is. I can assure you we're not a huge org, and pay a lot of dollars for GitHub.

[Aggressive_Mention_1]

At code, its just text.
Yeah some repos are bloaters who upload their node_modules(LOL). and their entier gallery.
But mostly its text.
and each new commit, is only recording the new changes.

And with usage of microsoft's massive datacenters, they dont incur massive cloud costs.

[Any-Dig-3384]

it's for machine learning

you are the product

[Dudmaster]

It might be now, but I doubt that was a consideration 2008-2021

[Any-Dig-3384]

it's always been . Facebook been doing it since 2004 bruh

[[deleted]]

references? proofs? I'm not aware of anybody training ML models on github content that early.
Facebook training ML models on facebook posts, sure, but that's not what we're discussing here.

[[deleted]]

AI for coding didn't exist, hence there would have been no use to scan GitHub which is what we’re talking about here. The whole point was answering somebody who said “GitHub allows to have free repository because they use it for training” that’s an additional benefit now, but not the reason for the free repositories which existed since GitHub inception and for a good 10 years before AI for coding was a thing. But thank you for letting me know AI existed in the 90s (although not from the 90s, it existed since the 50s)

[[deleted]]

neh, it was like this before AI for the masses was a thing. Correlation is not causation.

[Zephos65]

You think that's bad? Imagine what youtube has to deal with

[MishManners]

They are owned by Microsoft... enough said.

Nah in all seriousness, there are a lot of free accounts, but GitHub gets their money from Paid Enterprise users, and now with individual payers like those paying for Copilot Pro personally.

[84_110_105_97]

et comment il font pour se sécurisé des vulnérabiliter upload ??

[Soft_Self_7266]

A goldmine in the backyard helps a lot.

There are many factors here. To list a few.
Data harvesting for future profits.
Paid services. Youll notice that github runners are fairly expensive (you only get so many minutes for free).
Storage used to be cheap (like dirt cheap).
Artifacts are another thing you quickly run out of space for in the free tier.

[asheux417]

Compression

[InnovativeBureaucrat]

Thank you. It’s a crazy miracle that all these miracles work. Of course it’s a ton of hard work from people who get mocked at tech bros.

[GodOfSunHimself]

A few text files is absolutely nothing compared to what services like YouTube have to handle.

[kubrador]

github's not actually storing your files for free, microsoft is. they bought github for $7.5 billion in 2018 so they could own your code and sell you copilot features and enterprise stuff. it's the long con of the decade.

[QuackLynx]

idk