GitHub is a global company that provides hosting for software development version control using Git. The company's services are being used by over 40 million users worldwide. Thanks to its popularity, Microsoft decided to purchase the repository service for $7.5bn back in 2018. Now GitHub has announced that “all of the core GitHub features are now free for everyone”.
Until now, organisations that wanted to use GitHub for private development had to subscribe to one of GitHub's paid plans. However, GitHub is making a change to that saying that “every developer on earth should have access to GitHub. Price shouldn’t be a barrier.” This marks somewhat of a shift in thinking since 2018, when the GitHub's CEO Nat Friedman and Microsoft had “no current plans to change GitHub from the service that it is today (2018).”
Image credit: techcrunch
This means that teams now can manage their work together in one place – including “CI/CD, project management, code review, packages, and more”. GitHub motivates the change by saying that they want “everyone to be able to ship great software on the platform developers love.”
It's predicted that now that the features are free for everyone, a wave of new users will start using the GitHub's services. TechCrunch says that “there are more than 40 million developers on GitHub, and Friedman says the team is projecting that it will get to 100 million by 2025.” If it holds true it would mean a 150% growth in the amount of users during the next 5 years.
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KitGuru says: Do you use GitHub in your work or in your private projects? What are your thoughts on GitHub making all the core features free for the public?