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--- Github unveils another round of pricing changes ---

In a move that slipped under the radar with some surprising ease, Microsoft-owned repo wrangler Github unveiled yesterday (7th January) a new set of changes to their pricing model. Unlike the last round of changes that saw unlimited private repos gracing anybody with $7 in their pocket each month - The new round sees everyone on the platform receiving unlimited private repos in a move that's been met with some serious scepticism from the community.

The company's surprisingly brief PR emission (via their official blog) states that they've made 2 major changes, "Github Free now includes unlimited private repositories" - the catch being that you're limited to adding 3 collaborators, which appears to be a move aimed squarely at businesses attempting to operate without forking over the cash for an organisation.

In addition to this there's many vague statements about the kinds of scenarios that "are now possible" via "Github free", the kind of vague nonsense that makes trousers considerably tighter in the PR department.

It would appear that anyone who was previously paying the $7 a month is now a "Pro" user, The PR emission states that "Github Pro (formerly Github Developer) and Github team are also available for developers and teams who need professional coding and collaboration features".

It doesn't seem like you're being offered a whole lot for your $7 a month anymore - a move that would be considered by almost any other company in tech as a good thing, but given that it's Microsoft has been met with warranted suspicion and concern.

Or we could just be being a set of Donny Downers about it, who knows shrug

Comments
  • 6
    Meh, I'm no fan of MS, but can't see why people are complaining about this. It's a nice move.

    For some people this means they won't need to pay $7 a month anymore for private repos - fantastic. For others it means they can now keep all their repos in Github rather than hosting their private ones elsewhere - great.

    Some people are sceptical as to the motivation behind it, and therefore don't want to use free private repos on Github - also fine. No-one's forcing anyone to use them, and nothing else has changed.
  • 2
    The sceptical part of me thinks that they may be offering the free tier to get people in the door and once they have a nice large username, they unveil a price and force users to start paying a nominal amount to keep their repos in place.
  • 1
    I'm happy - the only reason I never used github was because I would have to pay to keep my code private.

    I think they're just trying to build a bigger userbase and overcome the exodus of users who hate MS after they purchases it.

    They may in the future start charging at which point if its worth it I will start paying or just move to a competitor, thats the beauty of capitalism
  • 3
    The last time I remember Microsoft giving away anything "for free" it was Windows 10 "upgrades". The skepticism is warranted
  • 1
  • 0
    It's exactly that: PR. They don't aim to get money from users, they want to make the companies using github top it it up. which makes sense considering that they (so far) had difficulties getting the users on their side.

    And since there's big money behind github now, they don't even need it to make profit, they can just use it to generate good PR.
  • 2
    Meh ... perfectly happy with Gitlab.
  • 2
    @nathanchere vscode? Typescript? Also I think microsoft is the biggest contributor to open source so there is that.
  • 1
    @nathanchere ms always have given free private repos, plus ci/cd and many other tools up to 5 collaborators per project on azure devops (ex visual studio team services)... So I'm not surprised of this on github , but people will keep bullshit against ms because is cool

    P. S.
    On bitbucket there is the same "catch"
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