
Buying or selling code? GitMarket wants to ‘disrupt an industry that severely needs it’
A Montreal threesome has created what it is calling the world’s first marketplace for buying and selling code using private Git repositories. By taking a cut of just 15 percent, GitMarket says its solution will be the cheapest on the web.
GitMarket, which officially launches later this month, is a marketplace built on top of Git. It helps sellers manage their code products and buyers looking to merge and update code into their existing projects. The startup provides a platform for developers and makers to monetize code, like templates, themes, plugins, libraries, snippets or any code they own, in any language.
For those who may not have a huge knowledge of the space, let’s start with Git.
Git is a free version control system that is used for software development and other version control tasks. Every Git directory on every computer is a full-fledged repository with complete history and full version-tracking capabilities, independent of network access or a central server.
GitHub is a web-based Git repository hosting service. It offers all of the distributed revision control and source code management (SCM) functionality of Git as well as adding its own features. GitHub offers both plans for private repositories and free accounts, which are usually used to host open-source software projects. GitHub reportedly has more than 14 million users and 35 million repositories, making it the largest host of source code in the world.
GitMarket cofounder Francis Perron helped us understand the base of the issue:
“A repository is like a folder. You have a private folder or a public folder, and we sell the private folder. You can have a private repository on GitHub, but you can only give access by doing it manually, so it’s kind of hard to make a business out of it. People can make private Git repositories on GitMarket and give access to people who pay for it,” said Perron.
GitMarket says current marketplaces are outdated and do not embrace today’s technologies. While “nearly every open-source project uses GitHub and BitBucket” to manage their code, premium code projects still lag behind with zip files.
“All the competitors are selling code but in zip files but it’s not the way developers like to handle their code,” cofounder Francis Perron told MTLinTECH.
The cofounder listed Envato, Creative Market, BinPress and Noodlio as those competitors who are still handling code “like traditional digital assets.”
GitMarket is a product created by Trinary, a small team of web enthusiasts and developers with more than 10 years of experience in Web technologies. The bootstrapped company is made up of founders Francis Perron, Karl Johnson and Pascal Meunier.
Perron told us GitMarket currently has close to 3,000 people subscribed to its services. The most he’s paid for code in his life was about US $65, whereas most code sales might go for around $40-60.
Ultimately Perron believes that when someone buys code to aid in completing a project, it shouldn’t be treated as second-hand material. One should be able to easily update and merge libraries, themes or plugins with their existing code.
“We also think that the code you sell should be held to high standards and rewarded as such. Refining and updating your code will also be highlighted by our algorithm and it’ll yield higher revenues and demand for your services,” said Perron.
“Our philosophy provides the foundation for our goal: to disrupt an industry that severely needs it.”
You must be logged in to post a comment.
+ There are no comments
Add yours