Thanks, Microsoft.

The only reason they did this is because gitlab has unlimited private repos since the first hour.

@bosi Is GitLab completely free? Is it as robust as GitHub and does it have that big userbase?

@kindacoder yes it is completely free. Of course there are also paid options but you don't need them for working except you have very special requirements (which github cannot fulfill anyway).
Speeking about robustness my personal feeling is that gitlab has some problems from time to time. Today for example there was a downtime for about 10 minutes in the afternoon. And of course the user base is not as big as the user base of github but I like the opportunities I have especially with ci/CD native in gitlab without external software like Jenkins.

Thank you ms. That's still a NO - I'm not coming back

@bosi great, thanks!

Already using Gitlab in Docker^^ And using MS? Nope

Fuck! I paid for a year about three months ago...

Oh wow, the amount of porn in private repos is gonna *soar*

@Parzi Hey, thanks for the idea!

Welp, just went to github and downgraded my paid plan because I was only doing it for the private repos. I'm certainly not the only one that did that upon learning this news.

That's great! Only reason why I went to bitbucket for a few private projects instead :)

@duckWit Same! Only had it for private repos too so this is awesome news. Thanks OP!

@cobolplz maybe new pro features soon?

@Parzi ahahahha😂

@kindacoder Gitlab is better in any way than Github, except for brand recognition.

If you have a large public project or library, most people will look for it on Github, and might distrust a lesser known repo hosting site.

The difference between Gitlab free & paid is mostly in organizational tools.

The free version comes with private repos & CI/CD tooling built in. But when you pay you can set up multi-layered code review approval structures, stakeholder staging container approval, Asana/Jira like scrum/agile tools, kubernetes monitoring, security filters so noob devs don't push API keys, etc.

But yeah, for the solo & small team development, Gitlab Free is a VERY complete product.

People seem to forget that free as a business model does not work. Providing services cost money. They need to make up for it some other way. That way might be unpleasant...

@hjk101 there are loads and loads of businesses that pay for higher tier accounts that makes all of this possible. Looks like they're wanting to make more of an effort to win over the little guy who will be more likely to one day convert into a business guy.

@austudo why is that a miracle? I keep my code in my own private repos stored in multiple devices of my choosing. It took a lot of my time and thought to write my code and I surely do not want it to be kept in alien hands. Ecpecialy the ones that tend to constantly mess things up.

I hear them say they are changing for better. I see them doing things. But I do not see the told changes.

Call me paranoid but I ain't trusting ms. I liked GH, I did. It was a nice jar of honey. But we all know whappens to a jar of honey when it gets to corporate hands: it gets sweeter and sweeter until you realize it's too late and honey-owners have already sucked everything from you they possibly could and made a nice penny out of it.

@duckWit I had not seen the actual plans/offerings. They are quite balanced. In this case you are right and it fits in with the competition's offerings and does not undermine the business.

It was my knee jerk response to everybody being happy with free or too good to be true stuff. Often I'm right but jumped the gun today.

Still no built in Ci/CD 🤷‍♂️
Meh, GitLab still has my vote.

Ps: been using Gitlab before it was cool.

Question: Some people seem to think MS owning GitHub and providing free private repositories is a move by MS to steal intellectual property. Is that a thing? Do people really think this might happen, and if so how do they think MS would get away with something that blatant?

By the way, GitHub has announced this a day earlier than it was supposed to. So it will take place in a few hours.

And there can be only 3 collaborators in a private repo. GitHub just tweeted to highlight the same.

@dontbeevil yeah. And now they even add free private repositories. Those scumbags.

@PrivateGER roger that private!

@stackodev

Any party that matters runs on-premise tooling (GitHub Enterprise, Gitlab Self-managed). All the tech giants tend to use homegrown stuff or even have their own cloud solutions (GCloud Source Repositories, AWS CodeCommit). Google and Facebook both once used Perforce, Microsoft used Perforce in the form of Source Depot, Apple used a mix of self-hosted Git and SVN. I think today they're only using on-premise Git products (with extensions like VFS for Git to deal with scaling).

But there are indeed a lot of sensitive startups/scaleups using Github Private. Until it goes wrong of course -- Uber for example had a code breach two years ago because they had no 2FA (so not even Github's fault), and after that breach they moved to an undisclosed self-hosted product.

It's possible MS acquired Github for IP stealing, although I think it's more likely it's used to reel devs back into the MS cloud ecosystem: I think in the coming years, Github will integrate with Azure a lot.

@dontbeevil Right! But they used that internally only for smaller products if I'm not mistaken.

Can't really complain about free private repos, even if you can only have 3 contributors.

And Microsoft are welcome to my IP, not sure what they'll do with 10 hello world apps, and 45 half finished Twitter clones though

If I were a betting man I'd think that Microsoft are gearing up to merge azure DevOps and GitHub.

And end up with one solution which does (almost) everything.

Probably keep the GitHub name but without having to use a second system to access the ci/cd features

@jespersh why? It makes more sense to have one unified product than force users to log into different systems to make use of their CI/CD offerings.

@jespersh @zarathustra An eventual merge with Azure seems likely.

Gitlab & Bitbucket are probably the largest competitors, both offer CI/CD pipelines, integrated scrum planning tools, staging containers, etc.

Github just introduced the "Checks" API as an eventual replacement for CI/CD statuses. Guess what the top suggested integration is? Microsoft's CI tool for mobile dev (free from MS branding though -- smart!). https://github.com/marketplace/...

I think they'll always keep supporting all kinds of integrations to not piss off devs (they're easy to piss off). Bitbucket can also easily be used with third-party CI providers.

But Microsoft branding will become more and more prevalent over time on Github.

@bosi The reason they did it is Microsoft

The real money MS is eyeing is from CI/CD pipelines, allow companies (especially Enterprises) or individuals to keep their source code, eventually they would start building the code on the same platform and continuous money generation starts for MS.

@bosi of course they did... your point?

@frickerg I have the feeling that it's like "oh cool we can have unlimited private repos now!"... "but you could have it already for years if you would use gitlab"... "yes but they give us unlimited private repos!"
It's not about being a bad feature. It's more about that's not special at all.

Already moved to Gitlab.
Thanks, but no thanks

I am not missing them for sure

My first rant in 200 ++ club!
Thanks to all the fellow devRanters! 🖤

@austudo I quit it years ago. And now Microsoft has taken it over... I'm out even more.

It's not much of a secret that Microsoft works closely with the nsa including being integrated within one or more mass surveillance programs so I'd rather not use any of their services.

Jesus christ - I still have no clue why people despise the fact that GitHub is owned by Microsoft.

I mean, Microsoft has done some bad, of course. But as of late, they were terrific!
Typescript; visual studio code (with extensions for C# or C/C++ as an alternative for the regular visual studio); They provided great support for the Linux foundation; They finally switch it up for Chromium in the web-browsing department..

They only improved GitHub so far!
This very post? About free private repositories? GOOD news!!

@Shacham6 As for my reasoning, literally read the comment above yours :)

@linuxxx Prove it. Where did you heard/read this? Also, you're writing code so special that you're afraid that THE NSA will steal it? I'm very impressed.

@DanijelH It was in the news for days worldwide in 2013 (Snowden releases). How many sources do you want?

Have some:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/...
https://theguardian.com/world/2013/...
https://e.foundation/the-prism-surv...
https://washingtonpost.com/news/...
https://theverge.com/2013/7/...-

If you'd like more:
https://duckduckgo.com//...

(Note: Microsoft is reportedly only one of the participants)

I don't write special code, I'd rather just stay out of any mass surveillance network if I can choose to do so.

@DanijelH also, as long as I'm not a terrorist, the NSA can't have a single valid reason to get any of my data which isn't public.

@linuxxx That's an ok intel but sources mention Apple, Google, Facebook, Microsoft and Yahoo all together. So we're not actually "safe" anywhere.