Back in June of 2018, Microsoft acquired GitHub for an eye watering 7.5 Billion dollars. This transaction took several months to make it through regulatory approval, with Microsoft finally taking control near the end of 2018. Yesterday, we saw the first official impact of the ownership change and for end users, it’s a pretty good change. The free tier of GitHub now offers unlimited private code repos! This was arguably the biggest reason for many small developers to actually pay for a premium account, so for these developers, they can downgrade to free and save their money. Now the major limitation between Free and Pro accounts is the number of collaborators in a private repo, with the free tier have a limit of 3, while the pro tier has no such limit.
Details of the new changes from the Github blog:
GitHub Free now includes unlimited private repositories. For the first time, developers can use GitHub for their private projects with up to three collaborators per repository for free. Many developers want to use private repos to apply for a job, work on a side project, or try something out in private before releasing it publicly. Starting today, those scenarios, and many more, are possible on GitHub at no cost. Public repositories are still free (of course—no changes there) and include unlimited collaborators.
GitHub Enterprise is the new unified product for Enterprise Cloud (formerly GitHub Business Cloud) and Enterprise Server (formerly GitHub Enterprise). Organizations that want the flexibility to use GitHub in a cloud or self-hosted configuration can now access both at one per-seat price. And with GitHub Connect, these products can be securely linked, providing a hybrid option so developers can work seamlessly across both environments.
Pricing for individuals now breaks down as follows:
Not a bad first move…