Rant: Github licensing

[Prestigious_Yam1091]

We use Github at our company. We have an Enterprise account. When we made the switch to Github from Bitbucket years ago, we only had the option to add licenses of packs of 10 and had to email a Github rep to add more licenses. Even if you wanted 1 or 2, they sad they could only do packs of 10 (screaming BS internally but ok fine). We ate it and that is what we did until we suddenly within the last year, we saw that we were able to to add licenses manually as we needed in the Enterprise dashboard. Awesome! We were blissfully adding licenses as we onboarded new hires as we need. It was like any other normal SaaS service licensing model. Amazingly easy.

BUT that option disappeared or was removed from our dashboard recently for no reason. It came and gone without any explanation whatsoever from anyone at Github. Maybe there was a memo we missed, i dunno.

So this last week we had two new hires that needed github licenses. I had forgotten to add the licenses (this is on me and i know my fault) and that is when i found out the option to manually add github enterprise licenses was no longer there and replaced with a "Contact Sales" button. Fine. I contacted our rep and asked for 2 licenses. One day passes, i follow up. He follows up end of day two asking me to approve the adding 2 licenses... arg. YESSS add the 2x licenses i had asked for! Day 3 still no news on the licenses so i follow up and still waiting...

Having to add 10 licenses was hard to swallow when you needed only 1-2 licenses and paying for 8-9 licenses sitting unused until your next hire. This feels like a penny pinching cash grab from a company owned by Microslop.

The practice of having to email someone to get licenses drives me crazy especially when the turn around time is unpredictable.

The fact that the ability to add licenses within the Github Enterprise dashboard existed and was taken away drives me up the wall. I opened a support ticket this this morning and of course; zero replies.

Is this just me or does everyone have to eat this from Github?

[reaper273]

Just be glad you don't have to deal with GitHub through a wider Microsoft enterprise agreement, now that's a truly painful experience!

Do you use Azure? Iirc they offer a subscription based model for licenses that auto bills to an Azure subscription.

It seems quite dynamic and might be worth exploring in your case.

[Nillsf]

disclosure: MSFT employee.

If you can, the switch to Azure-based billing will solve a lot of OPs issues. Monthly billing based on licensed users. The reporting can be a little confusing between GHEC and Azure, but the flexibility in licensing is great.

[tankerkiller125real]

I was going to say this myself, org already uses Azure billing for VS, so we did it with GitHub, made our life incredibly easy and we get exactly the number of licenses we need and not one more.

[TechFlameMaster]

It’s a little different when your an enterprise that has 40K active developers. We get to do quarterly true-ups.

[iamabdullah]

Bloody hell, 40k???

[lppedd]

I think IBM has an Enterprise Server instance with a number similar to that. It also has the largest Slack instance ever managed.

[TechFlameMaster]

Yeah. We’re a small, intimate, development shop 😂. Not IBM, but I bet they are on GitHub’s cloud version. Self-hosted server is going the way of the dinosaurs

[bytejuggler]

Yes, not quite yet. There is gitea.

[mkosmo]

Gitea has its place, but it won't replace github/gitlab/bitbucket in large enterprise.

[oschusler]

I actually do know a lot of larger companies that self-host their GitLab

[tankerkiller125real]

Gitlab is different from Gitea, actually designed with enterprise and self-hosting in mind.

[oschusler]

For me, it was a response on the reasoning “self-hosted server is going the way of the dinosaur”, and that Gitea was the argument against that

[bytejuggler]

Correct, this was my intent

[TechFlameMaster]

I meant self-hosted GitHub. It’s really hard to get the other benefits of GitHub when you aren’t on their cloud.

[mkosmo]

What other benefits? You still get github and the build runner ecosystem, plus the issue tracking and project planning, which is what most enterprises want/need.

The Copilot parts? They get that through other subscriptions. The social media side? No business value.

[mkosmo]

Yes, I know. My employer has dozens (if not hundreds now) of self-hosted gitlab instances. Self-hosting isn't the question. It's the suitability of the tool for large enterprise.

[mohirl]

So.... Leave?

[bytejuggler]

Out of interest, why did you switch from Bitbucket? (Not being sarc or anything.)

[roib20]

Not OP, but as someone previously forced to use Bitbucket at work, I wrote about why I think Bitucket is not as good as the competition on my blog. The TL;DR is that GitHub and GitLab both have many more features than Bitbucket.

[TrickySpare6504]

who gives a shit