Good news for GitHub users: they no longer have to pay to keep their code private. Since this month the company offers unlimited private repositories (repositories) for users with a free account, with up to three collaborators. They do not have to upgrade to a Pro account for 7 dollars a month.
The new policy under Microsoft
Some GitHub users did not trust it at all when Microsoft bought the company last year for an amount of 7.5 billion dollars. But GitHub does not seem to be focusing so much on saving money from the small fish; the focus is more on developing the Enterprise products. The Business Cloud and Enterprise products are united in one “GitHub Enterprise” product that starts at $ 21 per user per month.
Free private repositories
Developers may have different reasons to keep their code private – perhaps it is not finished yet, maybe they are working on a project for a client, or perhaps they are just starting programming. Whatever the reason, the ability to keep your code hidden from the public must be there. Also for free users. The customized pricing model from GitHub, which was received very positively, brings the developer platform more in line with competitors such as GitLab.com and Bitbucket.
Competition
Platforms for code sharing are becoming increasingly competitive. Public GitHub repositories were free, and remain so. In the area of private repositories, GitHub comes close to what their smaller competitors have been offering for free for a long time. If, for example, GitHub also made Continuous Integration (CI) available to free users, they could conquer an even larger market share. Different features pick different types of users to choose a specific platform, and eventually some of them change into paying users.
Free & Pro users
For existing GitHub Free users, these unlimited private repositories mean that they have the opportunity to keep their unfinished projects to themselves. Without having to worry about people coming across their code and wondering why it does not work as expected. Those who previously paid $ 7 per month for a developer account will automatically be transferred to a Pro subscription. You can downgrade to the free subscription. Pro users now naturally also consider downloading to a Free account.
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