I think it's a way to encourage open source.. while thinking that if you're a business, you can easily afford the 100$.
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 $7/month. The solution isn't to complain about their prices though--it's to accept that it's not worth it and switch to one of those cheaper substitutes.
I've used github before for school and yes, I was paid 0$/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 =(
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.
I wish they'd put a list of those up at github.com/tips or the like.
Why did you use private repositories for school work?
I'd rather pay and know that the service is being run as a viable business because that gives me confidence it's going to continue existing.
edit: it's actually $7, but still