You too miss a vital point: every user of github who doesn't pay for using the service adds to the costs of running the service. The popular it gets among free users, the more costs github has. What you're referring to is precisely the reasons why users use the service for free, and of all these users github doesn't make a dime (well, in practice they might make indirect money of these users by selling profile information and perhaps because some users might purchase services because they know github, but that's not a given)
> Companies that need enterprise functionality around security and flow configurability move to Github Enterprise and spend, not $7/month/organization, but $20/month per programmer.
This is not a given at all. Github is used by many because it's a great free service. When you have to pay for the service however (or better: you're going to use a service offered by github which costs money), there are other alternatives which might be cheaper or even free. E.g. private repositories are free on bitbucket. Private repositories don't need the social aspects of github at all, as they're private and the group of people using the repo is limited and known up front.
I find the article missing this point as well: sure they got funding and that's great, but their popularity among the users of the free service is not a reason to think they'll be a very profitable company: only the paying users can make that happen.
> Companies that need enterprise functionality around security and flow configurability move to Github Enterprise and spend, not $7/month/organization, but $20/month per programmer.
This is not a given at all. Github is used by many because it's a great free service. When you have to pay for the service however (or better: you're going to use a service offered by github which costs money), there are other alternatives which might be cheaper or even free. E.g. private repositories are free on bitbucket. Private repositories don't need the social aspects of github at all, as they're private and the group of people using the repo is limited and known up front.
I find the article missing this point as well: sure they got funding and that's great, but their popularity among the users of the free service is not a reason to think they'll be a very profitable company: only the paying users can make that happen.