GitHub Now Has a Windows Client
GitHub, the collaboration and version=control site for open source and corporate developers, today is launching a Windows client. This is a significant move for the company, as 50 percent of its traffic comes from Windows, despite the lack of any core tools for it, according to co-founder Chris Wanstrath.
GitHub, which internally is primarily a Mac company, had last year introduced a similar Mac client, which is now widely used. The clients sync users’ code to the cloud, and are built to be simple in order to attract new and less-savvy users, Wanstrath said.
The bootstrapped San Francisco-based company has 1.6 million registered developers and hosts nearly three million projects. Where GitHub started as half open source, half private code, over time it has become much more about open source.
The Windows client is in part a move to make the tool more appealing to companies, many of which are still afraid to put their code in the cloud, Wanstrath said. Private repositories is where GitHub makes its money; open source project hosting is free.
GitHub did have a security hole exploited earlier this year; Wanstrath made assurances that the company has security as a top priority.