GitHub facts for kids

Kids Encyclopedia Facts

Quick facts for kids
GitHub.com
GitHub Invertocat logo
Type of business	Subsidiary
Type of site	Collaborative version control
Available in	English
Founded	8 February 2008 (17 years, 4 months and 5 days) (as Logical Awesome LLC)
Headquarters	San Francisco, California, U.S.
Area served	Worldwide
Founder(s)	Tom Preston-Werner Chris Wanstrath P. J. Hyett Scott Chacon
Key people	Thomas Dohmke (CEO) Mike Taylor (CFO) Kyle Daigle (COO)
Industry	Collaborative version control (GitHub) AI development tools (GitHub Copilot) Blog host (GitHub Pages) Package repository (NPM)
Revenue	$1 billion (2022)
Employees	5,595
Parent	Microsoft
Registration	Optional (required for creating and joining repositories)
Users	100 million (as of January 2023^[update])
Launched	April 10, 2008; 17 years ago (2008-04-10)
Current status	Active
Written in	Ruby JavaScript Go C Rust

GitHub is a special online platform for computer programmers and developers. It helps them create, store, manage, and share their computer code. Think of it like a giant online workspace where many people can work on the same project together.

GitHub uses a system called Git for "version control." This means it keeps track of every change made to the code. It also helps with things like fixing problems (bug tracking), asking for new features, and managing tasks. GitHub is based in California and has been part of Microsoft since 2018.

It's very popular for open source software projects. Open source means the code is free for anyone to see, use, and change. As of January 2023, GitHub had over 100 million developers. It also hosted more than 420 million projects, called "repositories," making it the world's largest place for sharing code.

About GitHub
GitHub Services
GitHub Archive Program
Projects Developed by GitHub
See also

About GitHub

How GitHub Started

The idea for GitHub began on October 19, 2007. The website officially launched in April 2008. It was created by four people: Tom Preston-Werner, Chris Wanstrath, P. J. Hyett, and Scott Chacon. Every year, GitHub holds a big event called GitHub Universe to share news and updates.

How GitHub is Organized

When GitHub first started, it had a very unusual way of working. There were no bosses or middle managers. Everyone was expected to manage themselves and choose projects they were interested in.

Later, around 2014, GitHub added middle managers to its structure. This change helped the company grow and manage its teams better.

GitHub's Money Story

GitHub started as a "bootstrapped" company. This means the founders used their own money to get it going. For the first few years, the money they earned was enough to pay for everything and hire new employees.

In July 2012, a company called Andreessen Horowitz invested $100 million in GitHub. This showed that big investors believed in GitHub's future. In 2015, GitHub received another $250 million investment, valuing the company at about $2 billion.

By 2023, GitHub was making about $1 billion in revenue each year.

GitHub's Journey Through Time

The GitHub service was built using special programming tools called Ruby on Rails. It officially started in February 2008. The company, GitHub, Inc., is located in San Francisco.

GitHub at AWS Summit

In February 2009, just one year after launching, GitHub announced it had over 46,000 public projects. Many of these projects were "forked," meaning someone made a copy to work on their own version.

By the end of 2009, over 100,000 people were using the site. It hosted 90,000 unique public projects.

In 2010, GitHub reached 1 million projects. A year later, this number doubled to 2 million. By January 2013, GitHub had over 3 million users and hosted more than 5 million projects. By the end of that year, it had grown to 10 million projects!

In 2015, GitHub opened its first office outside the U.S., in Japan. In 2018, GitHub made its education programs free for all schools, offering special tools and resources.

Microsoft Buys GitHub

Microsoft was on top of the list of the ten organizations with the most open-source contributors on GitHub in 2016.

Before 2018, Microsoft was already a big user of GitHub. They used it to host many of their own open-source projects and tools, like Visual Studio Code.

On June 4, 2018, Microsoft announced it would buy GitHub for $7.5 billion. The deal was completed in October 2018. Even though Microsoft bought it, GitHub continued to run mostly on its own. This purchase showed Microsoft's focus on cloud computing and supporting open-source software.

Some developers were worried about Microsoft owning GitHub. They thought about moving their projects to other similar services like Bitbucket or GitLab. These other services did see more new users after the announcement.

Since then, GitHub has continued to grow. In 2019, they bought a code analysis tool called Semmle. In 2020, they launched GitHub India and also bought npm, which helps manage JavaScript packages.

The Octocat Mascot

GitHub's fun mascot is called the "Octocat." It's a cartoon octopus with five arms. The character was first created by a designer named Simon Oxley. GitHub loved the design so much that they bought the rights to use it as their logo.

They renamed the character Octopuss to Octocat and made it their official mascot. Later, an illustrator named Cameron McEfee helped create many different versions of the Octocat. You can see hundreds of these fun variations on a special website called The Octodex.

GitHub Services

You can use GitHub projects with standard Git commands on your computer. GitHub also lets you look at public projects right on their website. Many desktop apps and tools also work with GitHub.

The site also has features like a social network. You can see updates from projects, follow other developers, and use "wikis" (like mini-encyclopedias) for each project. There's even a graph that shows how developers work together on different versions of a project.

Anyone can look at and download public projects. But to add your own code or make changes, you need to create a free account. With an account, you can discuss projects, manage your own code, and suggest changes to others' projects.

GitHub used to charge for private projects, but since April 2020, "all of the core GitHub features" are free for everyone. This includes private projects with as many collaborators as you want!

The main software behind GitHub is Git, created by Linus Torvalds (who also created Linux). The user-friendly parts of GitHub were built by the GitHub team using Ruby on Rails.

What GitHub Does

The main goal of GitHub is to help with version control and tracking issues in software development.

Version Control: GitHub keeps a history of every change made to the code. When someone wants to add new code, they create a "pull request." Other developers can then review these changes, see what's different, and approve them. Each approved change is called a "commit." You can always look back at the history of all commits.
Issue Tracking: If there's a problem or a bug in the code, or if someone wants a new feature, GitHub helps track these. You can add labels, set deadlines, assign tasks to people, and search for specific issues.

GitHub also supports many other useful features:

Documentation: You can easily add instructions and information about your project.
Wikis: Many projects have their own wikis, which are like simple websites to share information.
GitHub Actions: These help automate tasks like testing your code or getting it ready to be used.
GitHub Codespaces: This is an online workspace where you can write and test code right in your web browser.
Graphs: You can see cool graphs that show how much work is being done, who is contributing, and how often changes are made.
Notifications: You can get emails or other alerts about changes in your projects.
Emojis: You can use emojis in comments and discussions!
Task Lists: You can create checklists inside your project files.
Image and PDF Previews: You can view many common image types and PDF documents directly on GitHub.

GitHub Enterprise

GitHub Enterprise is a special version of GitHub for big companies. It has similar features but can be set up on a company's own computer systems or on a private cloud. This gives large organizations more control over their code.

GitHub Pages

Since 2008, GitHub has offered GitHub Pages. This service lets you create simple websites for free, like blogs, project documentation, or even online books.

Your website content is stored in a GitHub project. When you update it, GitHub automatically builds and hosts your website. You can use a github.io address or connect your own custom website name. GitHub Pages also supports secure connections (HTTPS).

Gist

GitHub also has a simple site called Gist. It's like a digital notepad for sharing small pieces of code or text, called "snippets." It's different from GitHub's main site, which is for larger projects.

Gist is more than just a simple notepad. It keeps track of changes to your snippets, just like GitHub tracks changes to projects. You can also make copies of other people's Gists and keep your private snippets secure. Each Gist is its own mini-project, so you can even have multiple code snippets on one page.

Education Program

GitHub has a great program called the GitHub Student Developer Pack. This gives students free access to many popular tools and services that developers use. GitHub works with many companies to offer these valuable resources.

In 2016, GitHub also started the GitHub Campus Experts program. This program trains and encourages students to build technology communities at their universities. Campus Experts get training, funding, and resources to host events and help other students learn about coding.

GitHub Marketplace

GitHub Marketplace offers extra tools and services that you can add to your projects. These are like apps that plug into GitHub to give you more features.

Some examples of services you can find there include:

Waffle.io: Helps manage your projects and see all the changes and updates in one place.
Rollbar: Provides tools to find and fix errors in your code in real-time.
Codebeat: Automatically checks your code for quality and helps you improve it.
Travis CI: Helps you test your apps automatically to make sure they work correctly before you release them.
GitLocalize: Helps teams translate their content into different languages, keeping everything in sync with your GitHub project.

GitHub Sponsors

GitHub Sponsors is a way for people to support their favorite developers with money. It works a bit like Patreon. Developers can set up different levels of support, and people can make monthly donations to help them continue their work.

GitHub helps by covering the payment fees and even matches some donations for new developers, up to $5,000. This encourages more people to support the creators of the open-source tools and projects they use.

GitHub Archive Program

In July 2020, GitHub did something amazing: they stored a copy of their entire public code archive in an abandoned mountain mine in Svalbard, Norway! This mine is part of the Arctic World Archive, which is like a super-secure vault for important data. It's not far from the famous Svalbard Global Seed Vault.

This archive contains the code of all active public projects. The 21 terabytes of data were stored on special film reels designed to last 500 to 1,000 years.

The GitHub Archive Program is also working on "Project Silica." This project aims to store all public projects for 10,000 years! They plan to write the archives into tiny structures inside special glass plates using a super-fast laser.

Projects Developed by GitHub

GitHub has also created some popular software tools itself:

Atom: A free and open-source text and code editor (no longer updated since 2022).
Electron: A tool that lets developers build desktop applications using web technologies like JavaScript.