GitHub for Windows - is it open source?

Question

Is GitHub for Windows open source? If so, I can't seem to find the repository.

Answer 1

According to Tom Preston-Werner, one of the GitHub founders, in his post "Open Source (Almost) Everything", about the open-sourcing philosophy

Don't open source anything that represents core business value. [...] Notice that everything we keep closed has specific business value that could be compromised by giving it away to our competitors. Everything we open is a general purpose tool that can be used by all kinds of people and companies to build all kinds of things.

However, Hubot, previsouly a closed-source asset of GitHub, was eventually open-sourced in late 2011.

For the past year or so we've been telling people about Hubot [...] So we decided to rewrite him from scratch, open source him, and share him with everyone.

Currently, the Windows Github client is not an open source software... but who knows, it might be open-sourced one day.

Answer 2

Phil Haack (who currently works at GitHub) gave a hint in his blog comments to this effect:

At the moment, it is not open source. Many of the libraries we created are open source. As we polish up more and more of those libraries, we'll release more components we used to make the app.

So no, the application is not open source, but keep a look out for some parts of it being published on GitHub. (But bear in mind that this is just a blog comment, not an official announcement of any kind).

Answer 3

According to the latest news, GitHub for Windows is renamed to GitHub Desktop. It is redisigned with Electron and completely open sourced. The beta version has been released. The weblink of GitHub Desktop open source repository leaves here: https://github.com/desktop/desktop .