Is Github actually hurting for money? It has to be sitting athwart one of the most reliable rivers of gold amongst the independents.

Github loses 66mm on 98mm in revenue. They're hurting pretty bad.

Is it right to assume that this is because so much of their hosting is for free, open source projects?

And if so, then were open source to move toward GitLab with their even more permissive policies, how could they avoid the same fate?

Hosting is cheap, resources involved would be insignificant.

It's more about having too many people working on non-core products that don't deliver value. Gitlab seems to be doing fine and has built a full-featured CI system in the same time Github has only managed to add a basic project board and include commit messages in search.

I haven't seen all of their balance sheet but I'd guess most of their overhead is in salary, not in hosting.

Forgot to mention previously but GitLab is already on the same fate, waiting for an acquisition or IPO: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17234167

Well, Github execs could do the responsible thing and cut costs. But that sounds hard, and like it would require effort, so here we go. It's sad.