Yep, github price are pretty high. Even the most basic plan, which I use for my own purpose, kind of cost a lot. I think it's something like 12/month for a couple of meg and 3 repositories with 1 collaborator.
I think it's a way to encourage open source.. while thinking that if you're a business, you can easily afford the 100$.
The Micro (smallest) plan is actually $7/month for 5 repos and 1 collaborator. It's not cheap given that you could host an infinite number of git repos with an infinite number of collaborators on any shared host, but that's not the point.
GitHub is pretty. GitHub doesn't require you to ask for SSH keys to add someone as a collaborator. GitHub lets you comment on lines of commits. GitHub lets you host blogs/websites with GitHub pages. Etc.
Everyone's always comparing GitHub's prices to inferior products. GitHub saves you time and effort, and since most developers are highly-paid, it doesn't need to save very much time to be well worth it.
And if you do see it as too expensive, maybe you're not their target customer. If your time is only worth $10/hour, and GitHub only saves you 15 minutes per month, it's not worth it to you pay them $7/month. The solution isn't to complain about their prices though--it's to accept that it's not worth it and switch to one of those cheaper substitutes.
Well, maybe you are right about the fact that I don't use github for the good reasons. Mainly, I don't blog, host website and I don't comments on my own line of code. I mean, I'm a bit weird to use github to host my git repository. Now that I think of it, I might try to email posterious my git repository and blog on github.
I've used github before for school and yes, I was paid 0$/hour to work on those projects. Even with the "micro" package, we couldn't even be three students because only one collaborator was allowed. It's relative.. but 7$/month (~30$ for the semestry) for ~15 meg seems over priced for me.
All I'm saying is that the micro package isn't "that" micro and that you should pay for what you use. And thinking I'm not their "target" is wrong because there is more chance for me to use github later for real projects if I have used it during my university time.
But maybe you are right and I should switch to cheaper substitutes. I know lot of my colleague are doing it and more and more people on internet blog about them switching from github to other "cheaper" alternatives. In my opinion, it's way better for github to reduce their prices then to see users leave for alternatives.
All you would have to do is open source your projects, and pay a big fat $0 per month. Just .gitignore your sensitive data files like database credentials, api keys, etc. If you are using something like capistrano to deploy, all you would have to do is upload these files to your server, then hook a function onto the deploy action that symlinks the sensitive files back into place.
You can't possibly complain about FREE now can you?
P.S. I love github (and pay 7 big ones a month even though I don't really have a job and am running out of money like its nobody's business)
FWIW - isn't it kind of backwards that public code encourages cheating? Shouldn't we all be working together anyway? I have learned nearly everything I know from studying, and copy/pasting code from people better than me. What a shame =(
I think the problem is that assignments are usually don't have much variation in the end code, meaning someone stands to gain just by being able to copy public code. If the assignments were more open ended it could allow that type of class collaboration and in the end everyone could learn more.
Once again, thinking of it as ~15 megs is wrong. It's not about the 15MB you're taking up on their servers; it's about all the special stuff they put on top of it--the very nice web interface, post-receive hooks so you can find out when your friends push, and everything else.
Though you as a student are in an interesting situation (price-sensitive now but likely to be well-off once you graduate) that I think they should serve better, just from a business perspective if for no other reason.
They should really do something where if you sign up with a .edu email and promise you're a student, you can get, say 5 private repos and 5 collaborators for free/cheap.
Actually, it looks like they sort of do. If you search http://support.github.com for "student" you'll find a bunch of requests for them. One of their support guys explaining it:
>We'll give you repos for classwork where you're not allowed to share your code until the class is over. We just ask for some background... what school, classes, projects, etc."
They should make that a little better-known, though.
Businesses such as mine can easily afford 100/mo but that doesn't mean we'll waste money buying way more than we need (50 repos is 3x what we'll use). I like the user/permission management part a lot. Just not the entry plan and price point.
I think it's a way to encourage open source.. while thinking that if you're a business, you can easily afford the 100$.