Editor's Note: SmartBear's free eBook about GitHub is well-written, though the first half that details how GitHub works may seem remedial to some. The second half, about their product Collaborator, is also detailed and references many companies—Oracle being one of them—that have used Collaborator for enhancing their ability to work with GitHub. It's worth a read, and it's free.

GitHub is a website that wraps a software version control system, “Git”, and allows software developers to host their code online for free (though there are paid models available). If you’re a software developer, you know that Github is a repository for you to store, exchange, trade, and talk about code.

GitHub has proven nothing short of a revolution for a lot of small, nimble organizations, startups, and cutting edge companies. For heavily regulated, locked-down enterprises, this effect is certainly muted, but it’s subtly perceptible nonetheless.

In fact, when SmartBear interviewed more than 600 software developers, testers, and IT/Ops professionals earlier this year, we found that GitHub is now the most widely used tool for repository management.

GitHub Changing the Nature of Code Review

Collaborator’s integration with GitHub makes it easier than ever for teams that utilize Github to do more enhanced peer code reviews. If a pull request is initiated in GitHub, Collaborator will create a code review and build a link to the review directly in the GitHub conversation. Once the review is created, teams can utilize the capabilities of Collaborator’s robust dev collaboration workflow.

In our newest free eBook, A Guide to Developer Collaboration with GitHub: How to Implement a Code Review Process with GitHub and Collaborator, we’ll take a closer look at how GitHub’s revolutionary platform is changing the way development teams can work together. We’ll look at the different features offered in GitHub and show how using a code review tool, like Collaborator, along with GitHub can help improve collaboration across your development team.