
Free private Github repos for students and edu people - ndr
https://github.com/edu
======
johndbritton
I work at GitHub on all things related to education. I got a note that this
was on HN, so I thought I'd drop by and offer to answer questions and provide
some additional details.

Details on the discount:

* We're happy to provide students with GitHub Micro (5 private repositories) accounts for free. So long as you're a student, you're eligible. You can use the private repositories for anything you want.

* We offer organization accounts with private repositories to teachers that are using GitHub in class.

* Academic discounts on GitHub and GitHub Enterprise are available for many academic use cases, including: school administration, IT, and research groups.

Aside from the education discounts, I spend a lot of my time on university
campuses. Feel free to email support@github.com if you're interested in having
someone from GitHub come by your campus for a tech talk or to participate in
an event.

~~~
tomjen3
Bitbucket has offered unlimited free private repositories for years, why
should students go through the trouble of using github?

~~~
carterschonwald
THIS.

Bitbucket is free for personal use. Unlimited private repos. Edu accounts have
unlimited collaborators... FOREVER.

and they're super responsive to support requests, support importing code from
more sources, and support mercurial and git both.

Also the ticket trackers let you attach arbitrary files, not just those
animated gifs :)

~~~
randomsearch
Also, BitBucket supports Mercurial, which is used by some major academic
projects (for example, the Jikes Research Virtual Machine). I also personally
prefer Metcurial, so having the choice is great.

~~~
blackhorus
Also, on windows Mercurial get a wonderful tool as to Tortoise, and it works
well with Bitbucket...

------
jck
It is only free for one year. if you need free private repositories, you
should stick to bitbucket

~~~
suyash
+1 for Bitbucket, unless you want to deal with the hassle of moving over from
github to bitbucket when you no longer qualify as a student.

~~~
tekacs
Or... you can pay $7/mo, given that as a nom-student you can _probably_ afford
that much? :P

~~~
drdaeman
Why pay for something that you can get easily for free from a competitor?

------
AndyKelley
I did this when I was a student, and I recently had to move over the private
repos to bitbucket when it expired. Just stick to bitbucket for private repos.

~~~
rdegges
GitHub is a pretty great service (IMO). Totally worth paying for. If cost is
your number one driving force, then sure -- go with Bitbucket -- but I think
GitHub provides a way better experience (for users and developers).

~~~
lazerwalker
As far as I'm concerned, one of the best features of git is how easy it is to
create new repos. Setting up a new repo for a new weekend side project, or
splitting out a large codebase that's gotten unwieldy into a few separate
repos, should be a no-brainer.

BitBucket lets me have as many private repos as I want, since they make their
money when you want to add collaborators; GitHub's payment structure forces me
to consciously think about how many repositories I have. I prefer GitHub to
BitBucket in terms of their web UI/UX, but I _really_ don't like that
psychological shift.

~~~
ianstormtaylor
Honestly this has never been a problem for me. How many private repos do you
really need? It can't cost that much per month. The things most people are
working on just aren't that important. Or better yet, they _benefit_ from
being public.

~~~
dangrossman
I'm like the guy you replied to. I make a lot of repos in the course of work,
play, and learning. Most of them I'd like to keep around, including history. I
could fit everything on one CD; storage is cheap. Github would want $100/month
to host those repositories. BB wants nothing, or
<http://repositoryhosting.com> will host them all with backups for $6.

I don't have to think about costs when typing "git init", and I don't have to
think about scrubbing passwords/keys/personal information when typing "git
push"; repo-count pricing and public by default have high psychological
overhead. GH's pricing doesn't work for me, so I don't keep my private repos
there. Not a big deal, but I also don't think it indicates there's something
wrong with how I work, the value of my code, or how I spend my money.

------
wambotron
I don't understand the fascination with github. Bitbucket gives you unlimited
private repos for free, no special requirements. It has wikis, issue tracking,
and contributors.

~~~
da_n
I like to think of Github as Facebook, Bitbucket as Google+. I use Bitbucket
all the time (and love it), but it doesn't have the social network for
whatever reason.

~~~
randomsearch
Agreed. I also think that Mercurial is really great, and I'd recommend that
anyone who has only used Git spend some time working with Mercurial instead.

It seems to me that Git has won the popularity war,and GitHub has benefitted
from that. GH has also focused on the social networking side more.

As an academic, I'd recommend BitBucket, and pretty much every academic I know
prefers it to GitHub due to the free academic accounts.

To students preparing for graduation, I'd recommend getting a portfolio
together on GitHub, but also spending time on Mercurial - it is much nicer in
some ways, and variety is good for the soul.

------
tar
Why not just use Bitbucket? I switched over all my private repos to Bitbucket
some time ago and it is working pretty well.

~~~
m0shen
And to note, with BitBucket and an .edu email you get an unlimited account.

------
ymendel
For all the people wondering about what constitutes a "school-issued email
address" (.edu, .net, .ch, .ac.il, &c), we use the swot gem
(<https://github.com/leereilly/swot>) to automatically identify domains
belonging to academic institutions. You can see for yourself what's allowed,
even send Pull Requests to include your school if it's missing. Anything
that's not automatically accepted still goes through a manual review process.

And as others (johndbritton, jbarnette, jeremymcanally) have pointed out, you
can contact us at support@github.com if you're having any trouble.

------
JosephRedfern
I made a private repo for our Group Coursework, so that we could develop
without the risk of plagiarism by other groups. Once our coursework was
marked, we just made the repo public
(<https://github.com/JosephRedfern/CM2301-9>) - really handy.

I can see how this works out well for GitHub, too - 6 of our team-members
didn't have GitHub accounts when we started out. They now all do. Thanks
GitHub!

------
Kaivo
I used that during my last semester and it was awesome. I set it so that my
README.md would have my schedules, books to read, homework assignment, etc.
I'd update it as the term would go on. I was able to keep track of all my
projects at a single place even though they were unrelated, and I also took
notes during the lectures. With how they display .md files, it's really easy
and quick to take notes and still have something decent to read afterward.

~~~
QuantumGuy
Sounds very useful, mind if I take a look?

~~~
Kaivo
I removed them from Github to leave place for the next semester, since we are
limited in private repos and I didn't made them public since they also have
answers to some homework.

~~~
QuantumGuy
email me about how you did it then wesleympennock@gmail.com

------
elithrar
I recently pushed a group into using GitHub for configuration files and
documentation for a project that delivered an OpenStack compute cluster.

The main driver was not my own experience/preference for GitHub, but that they
have Windows & Mac GUI clients. I had no expectation that the other group
members were going to learn Git (most are Windows users with no understanding
of VCS), and therefore getting them using these clients made things a lot
simpler.

I did, however, recommend that the University look at using Atlassian's JIRA +
Bitbucket together for future semesters, mostly because JIRA has educational
licensing and integrates nicely with Bitbucket.

As an aside: the more software-orientated projects struggled (and have
struggled in previous years) with organising & distributing workload. Students
aren't formally introduced to (D)VCS systems nor any project management
software, and alongside figuring out their project scope & getting something
working, things tend to fall apart in a bad way. Some good web-based PM
software and a DVCS could hopefully go a long way into structuring their
projects, and would also give their project supervisor better auditing
capability to keep tabs on any "dead wood" members.

~~~
jeremymcanally
Just FYI, we have incredibly good educational prices on GitHub Enterprise and
offer pretty decent discounts for the .com product for universities. Glad you
found our native clients useful! :)

------
codereflection
Yet another reason to love Github. I'm running out of love guys, seriously,
knock off all this "do cool stuff" BS. ;)

Does this also apply to high school students? My oldest attends a STEM high
school here in Seattle, and this would be excellent for them.

~~~
johndbritton
> High school students are eligible as well.

> Since most high schools don't issue email addresses, the turnaround for
> approval can be longer.

We're also huge fans of FIRST and love to support those groups.
<http://octodex.github.com/FIRSTocat/>

------
latj
<https://bitbucket.org>

------
treahauet
I sincerely wish that more educators would teach about Git. Obviously I'm
going on personal experience, but how many people are coming out of college
with CS or BIS degrees and they've not even setup a Git repo before? From my
experience that number is too high. Hopefully offerings like this will help
solve that issue.

------
buzzkillr2
Wow Github you just lost out on a new subscriber! I was eyeing the micro
accounts and then found this HN link. Thanks for being awesome!!!

------
eertami
Our student radio station applied for an edu organisation account and within a
week had our org upgraded, we weren't sure if we would classify but figured as
we were fully student run and non-profit that it was worth asking.

Just wanted to add my thanks! :)

------
rdl
Just out of curiosity, what happened to SourceForge? They were essentially the
GitHub of the dotcom boom, and pretty awesome at the time, but really seem to
have fallen off.

~~~
reledi
They're still around and active, just not in the spotlight as much. They're
mostly used as a distributing system now. They're worth consideration if your
projects host and distribute large binary files in addition to source
archives.

~~~
dominicgs
That's exactly why we use SourceForge for Ubertooth, it gives us a good way to
host released versions and some binary firmware images.

I mirror Ubertooth to Github because I was tired of having to answer the
question "what's the Github URL?" from people wishing to browse the code.

------
nikhilarundesai
A friend of mine, upon seeing this page, noted that he applied for this a year
ago and still hasn't gotten a response. What sort of turnaround these
applications have?

~~~
johndbritton
For students with school-issued email addresses the turnaround time is very
quick. Without a school issued email address the turnaround should be a few
days.

Perhaps the message was caught in a spam filter somewhere.

I started working at GitHub in August and have improved the application
process quite a bit from what it used to be.

Tell your friend to reapply.

------
markprovan
Brilliant, I use Github to contribute to open source, but have had my private
repos on Bitbucket. It's great to move over to the one platform :) Thanks
Github!

------
DotNetWebForms
just use bitbucket for private repos.

------
kjell
They also let (501c3) nonprofit organizations in for free at the bronze tier.
Thanks!

<https://github.com/nonprofit>

------
dannyp32
Bitbucket offers free private repos to everyone as well. And there's no need
to fill out a special form. That's what I've been using for school projects.

~~~
mcintyre1994
If you add your student Email address to the account they'll give you
unlimited collaborators too if you ever need that.

------
cjc1083
I think the 7$ dollars a month is reasonable for a great service, I'm a
student (while working) but will continue to pay for my repos. I hope others
do the same. I think a significant percentage of GitHub's user base are in
school for something and could potentially qualify for this, but probably
shouldn't if they can afford to pay. That said I use the student discount for
Amazon Prime, so I am a hypocrite.

~~~
suyash
Github is a startup that took VC money. Use the free service they are offering
you, if you feel so inclined to donate your money, they are several non-profit
startups/organizations that need money badly so consider them first.

------
biolime
Is this exclusive to College students or are High School students eligible
too?

~~~
johndbritton
High school students are eligible as well.

Since most high schools don't issue email addresses, the turnaround for
approval can be longer.

~~~
biolime
I have a school issued ID, how would I go about this? Would I simply use the
same form but with my personal email?

~~~
johndbritton
Use the same form and provide some additional context in the comment field.

~~~
biolime
I just did exactly that! Thanks :)

------
BruceIV
I'm a student, so I get to take advantage of this, but if you aren't, a bare
git repo in a Dropbox folder makes an okay poor-man's private repo. You need
to be careful to let Dropbox sync before you shut down your computer, and,
though collaboration is possible with shared folders, you're likely in for a
world pain from syncronization issues.

~~~
_lex
This is a bad idea b/c of sync issues. Just use bitbucket, which is a poor
man's github.

~~~
Achshar
How do you classify Bitbucket as poor man's github? It has almost all the same
features, supports git _and_ mercurial and unlimited private repos.

~~~
reledi
> supports git and mercurial

If you're implying that you're stuck with git if you use GitHub, you can use
SVN with GitHub if you really want to.

[https://github.com/blog/1178-collaborating-on-github-with-
su...](https://github.com/blog/1178-collaborating-on-github-with-subversion)

~~~
merijnv
> you can use SVN with GitHub if you really want to.

How is that remotely relevant? Mercurial is a great DVCS with a user
experience that is (in my opinion) far superior to git. SVN on the other hand
is...I don't think I need to rehash this tired old DVCS vs SVN argument.

I would _love_ hg support on github, but until that time will use bitbucket
for my own projects, perhaps occasionally syncing to GitHub using hg-git.

~~~
reledi
I'm not arguing one (D)VCS over another, I'm just mentioning that you have
some limited flexibility just like you do with BitBucket. Your emphasis was on
the "and", so I assumed you were counting the option of choosing your DVCS as
a benefit, not the specific DVCS that were offered.

~~~
Achshar
I am not the parent. I wrote the original comment, and my point was that I use
hg, and github does not support hg.

~~~
reledi
Sorry, didn't notice I was replying to someone else.

Your point wasn't obvious from what you wrote; there's a mention of which DVCS
BitBucket supports but not which DVCS you use.

> [BitBucket] has almost all the same features, supports git and mercurial and
> unlimited private repos.

BTW, GitHub indirectly supports Mercurial. They wrote an hg-git plugin [1]
that allows you to push to and pull from a git remote repo using hg.

[1] <http://hg-git.github.io/>

------
nreece
As an aside, both Bitbucket and Assembla provide free private repos.

------
scotthtaylor
UK students with .ac.uk?

~~~
aspir
Yep -- all students are eligible.

------
qhoc
I really like this idea. I had Bitbucket before but it doesn't have a sense of
community. Plus Github's Wiki & ticketing system is kinda neat. Does anyone
know how long it takes to get approval after adding .edu email account &
verified?

~~~
avreal
It was instantaneous for me.

------
manish_gill
I tried to get one a few months ago. Still haven't heard from them. :(

~~~
hdra
I got mine more than a year ago in less than 30 mins. I was pretty surprised,
since my student email address hostname uses a country-specific tld instead of
.edu.

~~~
Rafert
Same here (.nl). I guess GitHub has a list of approved domain names for this?
Makes sense as .edu seems to be used in the US mostly. In that case it might
take a while if you're the first student from your university to register.

------
_kushagra
I applied two times and both times my application got rejected. My college
doesn't provide any .edu or other email ids to its students so I guess this
isn't for me.

~~~
johndbritton
Send an email to support@github.com and I'll take care of it.

~~~
_kushagra
I just applied third time with scanned photos of my college ID. I'll send the
email if it gets rejected too. Thanks

Edit: They accepted it this time! Thanks :D

------
baby
This is great. I never learned GIT because I didn't want to pay to get a
private repo. My next project will be on GIT thanks to this!

------
mikeg8
I respect the effort and love that education and students receive but I would
love to see companies offer these sorts of deals for other important
industries like HEALTHCARE. It's "cool" when companies announce these deals
but the reality is, more college students care about getting loaded than
building software. Healthcare is arguably more important than education and
the companies fighting to improve it have more financial challenges than most
students. NOTE: I'm a 24 yr old college dropout and co-founder of a health
startup.

------
coley
I'm a student of the Internet. I learn on it every day of my life. I'm
guessing I don't count though because I'm not affiliated with a corporation
that cares more about charging my bank account than making sure I learn
anything.

~~~
suyash
Philosohical arguments like these don't make much sense on HN. By the same
token, we all are students for life, either of Internet or of School of Hard
Knocks. They also say .edu address so that should make it more clearer for
you.

~~~
coley
I see it more of an argument of definition.

Students - People who pay to have information presented to them in a nice and
comprehensible manner.

Not Students - People who scour the internet and books in search of
information that aligns with their interests.

It seems a bit backwards to me.

Yes, the actual definition requires a 'student' be in attendance of a 'school'
or 'college'. What about Wikipedia, KhanAcademy, Google etc...? Aren't these
new schools that I can 'attend' and don't have to hop through a bunch of red
tape, apply, or send them money?

~~~
alanctgardner2
So, in this scenario 'student' is a proxy for broke and young and
impressionable. These guys want to give a discount to impressionable
youngsters who will learn their tool and take it with them into their careers.
It has nothing to do with actually learning things in school, and everything
to do with where you are in your lifespan.

I'm sure you feel very good about being self-taught, but the fact of the
matter is that if you didn't pay tens of thousands of dollars for a prolonged
adolescence with some vaguely educational overtones, you're in the minority.
You can hardly expect them to have a 'idealist' package for people who are
'particularly nifty' or ambitious. 'Student' is a convenient way to filter out
a demographic.

~~~
coley
If it's simply that, then why restrict it to students, instead of by age? Most
people under the age of 21 are broke, young, and impressionable.

I feel very good about the fact that I don't have to pay back debts for the
rest of my life. I feel bad that a company that I look up to doesn't think the
self-taught crowd are as worthy students as those who have it spoon fed to
them.

~~~
alanctgardner2
Frankly, that'd be a fine policy, but it may well be considered
discriminatory.

Not being in debt is awesome. Being self-taught is really cool, and I'm sure
we could debate the merits of traditional university education all day. The
fact of the matter is, wasting four years of your life and starting out deeply
in debt is half the societal contract that makes you a 'student'. In exchange,
you get to do student things. You get student discounts. You get a free pass
to drink and be a git for those four years, if you choose. If you want to buck
half the system, why not go whole hog and pay full price for GitHub? You're
still saving $9958 a year over my education.

