For those who may not be using Github because they want private repos and didn't want to pay, Github has now announced that unlimited private repos are now available for free accounts. It looks like they're making things free for standalone developers and are intending to monetize large projects or enterprises wanting to use Github.

The big limitation (which likely doesn't apply to many independent developers), is private repos are limited to a total of 3 collaborators (public repos are still allowed unlimited collaborators).

https://blog.github.com/2019-01-07-new-year-new-github/

If you already are a "Pro" and paying them, you can downgrade your account now to the free one. You do lose out on "Advanced code review tools", whatever those are (I tried finding specific info on what they are, but my google-fu failed me). I had private repos to hold my /etc/ configs to allow me to back up the important settings on my computer and allow tracking of my changes to various confs and scripts within the /etc/ directory and subdirectories.

I know this isn't a Slackware specific topic, but I know that many of us use Github or other online git repos for various Slackware projects including hosting our own SlackBuild scripts (that's what got me to start my Github account), so I wanted to make sure Slackers saw the news (I don't browse other sections of the forum frequently).

GitLab has offered private repos for free accounts as long as I know, but I don't know about what restrictions there are.

After using and have both, I prefer GitLab.

Just my

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I'm not sure the difference between the two. I had no experience with git so when I started, I went with the name I knew (GitHub). In reading about this online, there were a lot of comments that said the only reason they were using GitLab was for the free private repos, so many were planning on migrating completely to GitHub with this change.

However, apparently GitLab offers its own free CI/CD[1] (GitHub requires 3rd-party plugins) and unlimited collaborators on private repositories, plus the ability to host your own GitLab server.

But GitHub is still highly popular and the ability to participate in GitHub projects (forking, PRs, bug reports, etc) might be a big thing for some users... and if the only thing holding them back was a lack of free private repos, they may switch to GitHub (or just migrate completely). I've never felt a need to get a GitLab account, but I could see how if I only had a GitLab, how I'd want a GitHub account as well.

By no means am I trying to shill for GitHub... I just wanted to get the information out there so people could make informed decisions (after all, my day job is making sure people make informed decisions).

1. Continuous Integration/Delivery for those, like me, that didn't know what it stood for -- basically running specific tests on commits to hopefully minimize the chance of something breaking.

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Bitbucket has also always offered unlimited private repos. That's another choice.

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This is good news. It's been a big advantage for Gitlab thus far, and this competition is good for all of us.

For what it's worth, it's important to note that private doesn't necessarily mean secure. There's some discussion here:https://stackoverflow.com/questions/...e-repositories for example.

I'm leery of hosting sensitive personal information - such as plaintext passwords - using any type of git version control. Probably overly cautious but I would rather have things gpg encrypted in such a scenario.

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This is true and a huge advantage IMO. A lot of organizations are doing just this. GNOME for example. I have a small home server that I have a GitLab CE installation on (not that I use it). GitHub has this as well, but I think that it requires the Pro account.

GitLab has all these things as well. I think that GitLab started from/on GitHub. I just think that GitLab has become more "feature rich" than GitHub. I initially had a GitHub account and was turned off and deactivated my account when it was acquired by Microsoft, because we all know how they feel about open source, but have since set it back up for my SlackBuilds.

To me it feels like GitHub is a popularity contest and GitLab is where people get work done, if that makes any sense.

But there are many other code hosting services out there. Sourceforge, BitBucket, NotABug etc. I think that it's just a matter of preference now.

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That's true. Thanks for the reminder.

It doesn't look like this is so much a lack of security for the private repos themselves so much as a lack of control for an organization managing employees and monitoring those private repos (which I do agree could be quite the issue for the organization).

The only issues I saw that could affect users is if their email gets hacked, because someone could reset the password using that (although, I don't know what happens if you try and reset a password with 2-factor authentication... does it still require the 2nd method of authentication when resetting a password?) or if their ssh keys get compromised. But this is likely an issue with *any* service, git-based or otherwise.

And the security incident that was posted was from 2012... maybe there's been additional breaches, but I haven't heard of any.

I mentioned those things as you would need to have a GitHub account if you wanted to interact with those GitHub projects... just as I imagine you would need a GitLab account to be able to interact with GitLab projects. I just haven't found any GitLab projects I wanted to interact with (short of simply cloning them locally to build, which obviously doesn't require an account).

I haven't even thought about SourceForge since they were injecting adaware into installers. Since I don't hear about it anymore, I assume that is no longer the practice, but that tarnished a name that I had massive respect for (that is where I hosted my first project over 10 years ago).

But it is true as you, dugan, and phalange show... choice is a good thing. It's good that GitHub is catching up with what others were offering for free to bring some more competition and hopefully more innovation

Thanks for all the comments everyone!

Huh, it seems that GitHub no longer offers "GitHub Enterprise Server" (self-hosted). But it was something like $5000 a year. That is/was amazingly outrageous.

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I think Sourceforge has gotten new management since the adware fiasco or whatever it was, but the damage has been done. I still have a couple projects on there from before they went out of vogue, but I don't think my stuff is popular enough for that sort of thing anyway. Personally, I use GitHub for most things now simply because it works and I haven't had any issues with it so far.

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They're moving to per user licenses for "enterprise" ($25/user/month -- no clue on the minimum) and "team" ($9/user/month -- $25 minimum). The Enterprise version still offers self-hosting or cloud hosting.

https://github.com/pricing
https://github.com/enterprise

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sr.ht might also be of interest

Or it can be the show stopper for some, given the recent anti-privacy laws trend in Australia, where Atlassian (the owner of Bitbucket) is.

In a distributed version control system, each clone of a repo can be used as a source of truth. That's the point of using a DVC, after all; there's no central place that everyone has to go to get the code.

If you're a company that uses CI/CD, then you might want some of the integrations provided by GitHub (and I assume GitLabs) that inform you when things are merged into specific branches of your repositories.

The problem with Github is that at least issues are not part of the repository, this makes it a pretty strong third party service lock-in.

I think I can understand why git doesn't bundle issues by default into the repository (Linux kernel developers use a mailing list for that), yet using a version control system that does it out of the box and doesn't involve any hacks or third party addons feels so cool, it's the main reason why I frown upon git, at least for my personal stuff.