Samuel Wood (Otto) · @Otto42
11th May 2016 from TwitLonger
Thoughts on github's pricing changes
@Krogsgard @pippinsplugins @Ipstenu Moving to a longer format because seriously, I hate talking in 140's.
I guess I'm not seeing the point of having private repos on GitHub, is the underlying disconnect here. If you use private repos, then you're basically renting their space.
$9 per user per month is a reasonable price for that sort of thing and to have all the functionality of GitHub. Yes, it's far more than they previously charged, but at the same time, it's within the realm of sanity.
The alternative is the same as it has always been: Build your own. Nothing GitHub does is particularly special (with the exception of their frankly broken Pull Request system). And the whole point of using github in the first place is for collaboration with, well, everybody else using GitHub. The whole concept of "private" repos makes little sense to me when you're putting it on a site that is very, very public.
A "private" repo is, you know, private. On your own server. Git is, after all, decentralized. You could plop a normal git repo on any private VPS you like in a matter of under an hour. If you're collaborating with a small group of like 5 people, then coordination is not really a big deal that I'd pay $45 a month to use GitHub for it. You can use any tooling you like, make any website you like. You could probably reproduce the important parts of GitHub that you need for your private setup using WordPress in like a day or two.
It just seems to me that any advantages of using GitHub at all seem largely nullified by using private repos. Yes, collaboration and using the same toolset you are used to, I get that. But here you're falling prey to vendor lock-in once again. You're used to it, you like it, you're afraid of change, pay up. Simple.
The advantage of open source software is the freedom to say "up yours" and build your own version instead. Git is open source. Think about it. A $15 a month VPS could easily fit your needs for both privacy and collaboration.