For a while I was a bit worried that GitHub had just ran away with the prize and no one else was bothering. It is pretty obvious that Google isn't interested in improving Google Code and that Sourceforge hasn't aged a day (that's not really fair, but it feels like it).
I think there is still a chance for BitBucket to make a splash, but I think its going to be hard to win anymore. That's fine, 2nd place makes a lot of money too (not counting places 1-10 for enterprise source control, which basically print money, and of which GitHub is chasing too).
They've got a good shot, because a lot of people need private repositories and do NOT need the social features of Github. They just need a basic git server to hold the master repository. For doing their work, the built-in tools of git are sufficient.
For such people, Github is ridiculously expensive, since their price is based on the number of repositories you have. For instance, at work we've got enough repositories (all small) that we'd need the $200/month Github plan. In terms of storage costs, that works out to about $10/megabyte/month.
That's 5 ORDERS OF MAGNITUDE more than the market rate for cloud storage. When you are selling something 5 orders of magnitude above the market rate, there is room for competitors.
Bitbucket's self-hosted enterprise product Stash is priced aggressively. It's free for open source projects, non-profits and classrooms. For small teams (up to 10 users), it costs just $10/year, all in, and you get the source code.
Contrast with Github where the minimum purchase is 1 seat pack (up to 20 users), costing $5000/year, and you don't get any access to the the source code.
Since BitBucket is run by Atlassian, whose primary business (as far as I know) is enterprise software, I would guess (again without knowing) that they're in a pretty good position.
They're well known for their wiki, Confluence, and their ticket/issue/task tracker, JIRA. Source control is a natural extension of those tools, which I'd guess have had some effort put into making sure they work well together.
Looks like Stash is what they sell to enterprises, versus BitBucket which is hosted. Anyone know if these are completely separate products, or if they share a common codebase?
I've found SourceTree to be a great GUI tool for working on Git/Mercurial repos.
All of which is to say, good on them. I'm glad to see two very respectable players in this space.
Those free private repos are awesome and liberating - instead of bundling whole solutions into repos I'm just making them for anything now because the difference between a dozen repos and a few dozen is $0 a year instead of $600.
I really wish Google Code would support paid/private projects. Every startup I have been at would have been more productive with Google Code. Their bug tracker is better than both GitHub and BitBucket. We wouldn't have needed yet another set of accounts due to already being on Google. And critically they let you have multiple repositories for the same project. That is a huge annoyance with GitHub and BitBucket where you have exactly one repository (sometimes a second "wiki" one) and then one bug tracker, downloads etc. Every project I have worked on has multiple repositories (eg a server part, testing code, android client, admin tools, ios client). It has been of zero benefit having each one with its own bug tracker, downloads, wiki etc as often issues cross boundaries (eg bad display in client could be because of a bug in server returning bad data).
Please keep on doing what you are doing. Your service and this new redesign is awesome, and my team and myself wouldn't be where we are without you.
We're a small team of young developers working on a startup for the past few months. We haven't launched yet so we're obviously not profitable, but the fact that you've enabled us to make it as far as we have also ensures that when we are in a position to pay for software development tools they will come from a brand we know, trust, and love: Atlassian.
Also, you should update the Atlassian Store with t-shirts and other swag.
Once again, great job, thank you, and keep on keepin' on.
I know its not the elephant in the managed source code hosting space, but I like BitBucket better then Github. I like the option to use Mercerial for projects and I like the way they ask me to pay for things ( pay for private shared repositories ).
Also, BitBucket's free plan allows for unlimited public and private repositories, while GitHub only allows for public repositories on the free version.
I use BitBucket for a number of side-projects mostly as a way to make sure all my code is backed up off-site, for free.
For me the experience of managing open source repositories gets worse with recent bitbucket updates to the point that I'm in process of moving my open-source to github.
How one is supposed to find what have bitbucketer done? Visit e.g. Ian Bicking's account: https://bitbucket.org/ianb . Is it easy to find out why are so many people following Ian? What repositories are interesting? "bbdocs" with 4 followers? From the first page of Ian's repositories I know "dozer", did Ian wrote it? Click. Oh, it's an outdated fork.
Just compare the direction Github took at its recent redesign. GitHub folks made user profiles act like resume. The repositories are visually big, it is clear what repositories are popular, what repos are active, etc. It is also clear what a person is into: repositories are sorted by 'last modified' date. There is "Explore" section with trending repos (bitbucket's Explore is a joke) and so on.
Bitbucket instead removed follower counts and fork counts from the repositories list; repositories are sorted alphabetically now; there is no way to see who the user follows or who user is followed by.
I was missing important ticket updates at bitbucket several times because the newsfeed is not "infinite"; "Inbox" messages count stops working sometimes, etc.
There are things bitbucket is better at: e.g. github links to source code lines are awful (they don't contain changeset information in URL by default and so easily become outdated); there is no way to specify repo language in github (one of my recent Python repos was in a "Top followed this week" for a C language, that's great of course but..)
Don't get me wrong, bitbucket becomes nicer and nicer, I'm still a heavy bitbucket user and we use a paid account at work; but it seems that the open source support (code discovery and presentation) is not their priority right now, or at least they act so.
I think one of the reasons for github's success is that it put a lot of emphasis on the "social" part of the website. At some point using github was "cool" and I think there's been a massive network effect. It's sourceforge meets facebook.
I sometimes wonder if github's not headed to become the new reddit. At least if you look at some of the comment threads on the site it looks that way [1].
Bitbucket feels more like an old school "code hosting" service. Not that there's anything wrong with that.
As someone who mostly uses github to browse through source code, the experience in Github is much better. Their source browser is fast and the code is very readable. Now, I'm trying to see if the new bitbucket can compare but there is no Explore option on the homepage so I can't really check their source browser.
Well, Github's UI used to be much better, now it's comparable. I do wonder why Bitbucket insists on having "overview" as the standard page to go to when visiting a repository, making Code the default would be a better idea IMHO. Also because more people use Github, more people are likely to start using it so they can fork their favorite projects
I'll tell you why: the 'git' in 'github' which helped to create all the hype around it. I came across lots of developers that thought github was somehow related to Linus, and for them and everyone else it was almost intuitive that github was the way to go if you wanted to use git.
The design is very clean and appealing. I'm glad to see they're still investing significant effort. I want to see Bitbucket get more visibility and success.
I prefer Mercurial. Among other things, it has better cross platform support. Bitbucket added Git a while ago. I wish Github would add Mercurial.
Bitbucket also offers unlimited private repos. That means I only use Github for OSS projects. I use Bitbucket for everthing else. Consequently, I always recommend them to friends and companies looking for hosted repos.
I love their website and how you can create free private repos. Good business practice: Unlimited private projects, limited contributers on private projects. Win-win
BitBucket is offering free private accounts as a loss leader, not out of the kindness of their hearts. This is their strategy for competing with GitHub.
A $7/month subscription for private github repos is well worth it.
I think it is really unfair to call Github greedy - they provide a valuable service and charge, in my opinion, a very reasonable price for it.
I'm actually considering moving to bitbucket - I have a lot of small private repos, and free vs $22/month makes a lot of sense. It's not that $22 is a "lot" of money - when you just have a bunch of small stuff on the side and don't make a ton of money off it, $22 here and $10 there starts to add up.
But I don't think Github is greedy - I'm just not their target market, and that's fine.
Yay! Github's UI has been slowly getting worse over the last year, and their paid account options are terrible (limits on the number of private repositories, as opposed to the disk space). I've been a paying company for years and years, but I recently scaled back from four paying accounts to one.
I don't want to have to organize my private git repositories around GitHub's idiotic account restrictions, so I'm going to give BitBucket a try with some personal repos and see if the UI works for me. If it does, you've got a new customer. :D
I generally version all the things, and end up with lots of small private repos. Bitbucket's pricing model is perfect for hosting that kind of thing. Really liking the new UI.
Awesome, I think this just heavily strengthened the future of Mercurial. I'm not trying to start any version control wars here, but personally, I found Mercurial to be the most "intuitive" approach (unlike Git/SVN, but again, that's my opinion).
I've extensively used Bitbucket in the past, especially for personal projects. I love what I see here, and will continue to use the service as such. Long live Bitbucket! :)
Lovely work. From peeping the source, looks like an interesting hybrid use of Backbone.js as well. If you're interested in getting the new Bitbucket listed on the Backbone homepage, just email me a brief paragraph, and I can set it up.
The new design is really great and in many ways better than GitHub’s. Now people unfamiliar with the services might actually be able to find a download button for once.
Another place where GitHub is really dropping the ball is in the social aspect of their service with terrible activity feeds I can’t believe anyone actually uses. I wrote a rant about it here: http://pygm.us/uGhNdcGU.
There are many, many ways Bitbucket can beat—and beats—GitHub, so this new design makes me a lot more optimistic about the continuing competition between the two and the improvements this will result in on both sides.
I will say that I’m not sure whether I like a grey as dark as the one you use in your new design, though. :)
A lot of people here are commenting on GitHub being 'overpriced' or 'greedy.' TPW did an interview a while ago that has insight into why their pricing structure is the way it is. It's a pretty interesting read:
(search for 'which metrics') to skip to the pricing part).
Money quote: "That’s like buying a car based on how much it weighs. It’s irrelevant."
I may be biased since GitHub does a lot to foster the developer community in my area (I nabbed a sweet contracting gig at one of their drinkups), but I'm perfectly happy with their pricing.
It looks like the limits are by number of users, which seems fairer. But they will probably make less money. I thought most of the projects on github were <5 people.
A few months ago, I convinced my startup to try bitbucket because of the free private repos. Over the course of a month or two, there were multiple times that I could not collaborate with my teammate because bitbucket was unreachable. We have since switched to github, pay a small fee per month, and have never had this issue.
How is everyone else's up-time experiences in the past few months? I'm setting up a few personal projects and would like to give them another shot if they've improved that one aspect.
Surprised to not see GitLab mentioned here. GitLab is FOSS and already has almost all of these features, allowing me to host multiple private repos on a single cheap VPS. That is exactly why I chose it over Bitbucket or Github.
If Bitbucket wants to stay competitive, I think this is the least they can do -- unfortunately I don't see any innovation that puts them ahead of the other players in the market.
[+] [-] bryanh|13 years ago|reply
I think there is still a chance for BitBucket to make a splash, but I think its going to be hard to win anymore. That's fine, 2nd place makes a lot of money too (not counting places 1-10 for enterprise source control, which basically print money, and of which GitHub is chasing too).
[+] [-] notatoad|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] tzs|13 years ago|reply
For such people, Github is ridiculously expensive, since their price is based on the number of repositories you have. For instance, at work we've got enough repositories (all small) that we'd need the $200/month Github plan. In terms of storage costs, that works out to about $10/megabyte/month.
That's 5 ORDERS OF MAGNITUDE more than the market rate for cloud storage. When you are selling something 5 orders of magnitude above the market rate, there is room for competitors.
[+] [-] bitcartel|13 years ago|reply
http://www.atlassian.com/software/stash/pricing
Contrast with Github where the minimum purchase is 1 seat pack (up to 20 users), costing $5000/year, and you don't get any access to the the source code.
https://enterprise.github.com/pricing
[+] [-] wahnfrieden|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] ErrantX|13 years ago|reply
Bitbucket nails the private project space; so for small dev companies they are perfect.
I've been a BB user from early on and they have successfully focused on this niche for some time now.
I'd say both are equally perfect options for their respective usage :-)
[+] [-] charlieok|13 years ago|reply
They're well known for their wiki, Confluence, and their ticket/issue/task tracker, JIRA. Source control is a natural extension of those tools, which I'd guess have had some effort put into making sure they work well together.
Looks like Stash is what they sell to enterprises, versus BitBucket which is hosted. Anyone know if these are completely separate products, or if they share a common codebase?
I've found SourceTree to be a great GUI tool for working on Git/Mercurial repos.
All of which is to say, good on them. I'm glad to see two very respectable players in this space.
[+] [-] benologist|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] rogerbinns|13 years ago|reply
People have been begging Google to pay them! https://code.google.com/p/support/issues/detail?id=1829
[+] [-] bitcartel|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pimentel|13 years ago|reply
What kind of source control do big corps use? Don't they just use SVN, with enormous budget for maintenance contracts?
[+] [-] thomasvendetta|13 years ago|reply
Please keep on doing what you are doing. Your service and this new redesign is awesome, and my team and myself wouldn't be where we are without you.
We're a small team of young developers working on a startup for the past few months. We haven't launched yet so we're obviously not profitable, but the fact that you've enabled us to make it as far as we have also ensures that when we are in a position to pay for software development tools they will come from a brand we know, trust, and love: Atlassian.
Also, you should update the Atlassian Store with t-shirts and other swag.
Once again, great job, thank you, and keep on keepin' on.
[+] [-] jespern|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] jstepka|13 years ago|reply
Launching a t-shirt store in three weeks.
[+] [-] tetomb|13 years ago|reply
Hope you get hold of the .com domain name soon.
[+] [-] LordIllidan|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] dkhenry|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Osiris|13 years ago|reply
I use BitBucket for a number of side-projects mostly as a way to make sure all my code is backed up off-site, for free.
[+] [-] ericcholis|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] citricsquid|13 years ago|reply
http://www.elearnenglishlanguage.com/difficulties/thanthen.h...
[+] [-] kmike84|13 years ago|reply
How one is supposed to find what have bitbucketer done? Visit e.g. Ian Bicking's account: https://bitbucket.org/ianb . Is it easy to find out why are so many people following Ian? What repositories are interesting? "bbdocs" with 4 followers? From the first page of Ian's repositories I know "dozer", did Ian wrote it? Click. Oh, it's an outdated fork.
Just compare the direction Github took at its recent redesign. GitHub folks made user profiles act like resume. The repositories are visually big, it is clear what repositories are popular, what repos are active, etc. It is also clear what a person is into: repositories are sorted by 'last modified' date. There is "Explore" section with trending repos (bitbucket's Explore is a joke) and so on.
Bitbucket instead removed follower counts and fork counts from the repositories list; repositories are sorted alphabetically now; there is no way to see who the user follows or who user is followed by.
I was missing important ticket updates at bitbucket several times because the newsfeed is not "infinite"; "Inbox" messages count stops working sometimes, etc.
There are things bitbucket is better at: e.g. github links to source code lines are awful (they don't contain changeset information in URL by default and so easily become outdated); there is no way to specify repo language in github (one of my recent Python repos was in a "Top followed this week" for a C language, that's great of course but..)
Don't get me wrong, bitbucket becomes nicer and nicer, I'm still a heavy bitbucket user and we use a paid account at work; but it seems that the open source support (code discovery and presentation) is not their priority right now, or at least they act so.
[+] [-] eblume|13 years ago|reply
It's looking pretty damn good to me right now!
[+] [-] simias|13 years ago|reply
I sometimes wonder if github's not headed to become the new reddit. At least if you look at some of the comment threads on the site it looks that way [1].
Bitbucket feels more like an old school "code hosting" service. Not that there's anything wrong with that.
[1] https://github.com/visionmedia/n/issues/86
[+] [-] krelian|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] bvdbijl|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] debacle|13 years ago|reply
But BitBucket will continue to get better, and Atlassian doesn't produce shit products.
[+] [-] yen223|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] niels|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] mylittlepony|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Todd|13 years ago|reply
I prefer Mercurial. Among other things, it has better cross platform support. Bitbucket added Git a while ago. I wish Github would add Mercurial.
Bitbucket also offers unlimited private repos. That means I only use Github for OSS projects. I use Bitbucket for everthing else. Consequently, I always recommend them to friends and companies looking for hosted repos.
[+] [-] sergiotapia|13 years ago|reply
http://www.dreamincode.net/forums/blog/1267/entry-3659-visua...
I love their website and how you can create free private repos. Good business practice: Unlimited private projects, limited contributers on private projects. Win-win
Github is just greedy.
[+] [-] lee|13 years ago|reply
No, Github is a business.
BitBucket is offering free private accounts as a loss leader, not out of the kindness of their hearts. This is their strategy for competing with GitHub.
A $7/month subscription for private github repos is well worth it.
[+] [-] option_greek|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] suresk|13 years ago|reply
I'm actually considering moving to bitbucket - I have a lot of small private repos, and free vs $22/month makes a lot of sense. It's not that $22 is a "lot" of money - when you just have a bunch of small stuff on the side and don't make a ton of money off it, $22 here and $10 there starts to add up.
But I don't think Github is greedy - I'm just not their target market, and that's fine.
[+] [-] saibotd|13 years ago|reply
https://bitbucket.org/saibotd/bitbeaker
[+] [-] erichocean|13 years ago|reply
I don't want to have to organize my private git repositories around GitHub's idiotic account restrictions, so I'm going to give BitBucket a try with some personal repos and see if the UI works for me. If it does, you've got a new customer. :D
[+] [-] sshconnection|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] Breakthrough|13 years ago|reply
I've extensively used Bitbucket in the past, especially for personal projects. I love what I see here, and will continue to use the service as such. Long live Bitbucket! :)
[+] [-] jashkenas|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] pessimism|13 years ago|reply
Another place where GitHub is really dropping the ball is in the social aspect of their service with terrible activity feeds I can’t believe anyone actually uses. I wrote a rant about it here: http://pygm.us/uGhNdcGU.
There are many, many ways Bitbucket can beat—and beats—GitHub, so this new design makes me a lot more optimistic about the continuing competition between the two and the improvements this will result in on both sides.
I will say that I’m not sure whether I like a grey as dark as the one you use in your new design, though. :)
[+] [-] cutie|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] wickedchicken|13 years ago|reply
http://mixergy.com/tom-preston-werner-github-interview/
(search for 'which metrics') to skip to the pricing part).
Money quote: "That’s like buying a car based on how much it weighs. It’s irrelevant."
I may be biased since GitHub does a lot to foster the developer community in my area (I nabbed a sweet contracting gig at one of their drinkups), but I'm perfectly happy with their pricing.
[+] [-] duiker101|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] axusgrad|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] MartinMond|13 years ago|reply
So much more info, and even a graph like in gitx.
[+] [-] stiletto|13 years ago|reply
How is everyone else's up-time experiences in the past few months? I'm setting up a few personal projects and would like to give them another shot if they've improved that one aspect.
I'm not affiliated with either company.
[+] [-] doublerebel|13 years ago|reply
If Bitbucket wants to stay competitive, I think this is the least they can do -- unfortunately I don't see any innovation that puts them ahead of the other players in the market.
[+] [-] habosa|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] factorialboy|13 years ago|reply
[+] [-] masklinn|13 years ago|reply
Though I'd prefer the preview to be live...
The readme taking center stage in the "overview" page is nice. Though getting it again in the "source" page is weird