Muniza AshrafGitHub, the software hosting and version control platform owned by Microsoft slashed its subscription price by more than half and made its core features available to all users for free; that is moving them from paid plans to free tier.
On Tuesday, GitHub announced on Twitter that its Team plan, which is an entry-level paid tier previously costing $9 has been reduced to $4 per user a month. Existing customers will have their bills reduced automatically.
GitHub still offers a paid plan- the Enterprise plan for $21 that includes SAML sign-on, expanded storage and actions, additional security and compliance features. Not to mention, GitHub One service with its own perks.
The free tier now offers unlimited repositories and collaborations even if the project is private. Since previously the repos were accessible only if the project was public or included a small number of users. Now, even those teams that use the services for big projects can easily access repositories free of cost. In addition to this, GitHub is providing 2,000 minutes per month of free access to GitHub Actions.
In Conversation with GitHub’s CEO Nat Friedman
GitHub CEO Nat Friedman in conversation with TechCrunch spoke about the upcoming plans for the company. Friedman said that they are switching to a freemium model; which is GitHub’s transition from ‘pay-for-privacy’ to ‘pay-for-features’. He further said, “The way I think about it is we want every developer and team on earth to be able to use GitHub for their development, whether it’s private or public development.”
Speaking about future goals; Friedman boldly stated that GitHub is projected to grow from 40 million developers as of now, to a whopping 100 million by the year 2025. He continued to shed light on the core value of the company; which according to his statement translated to ‘free and easy accessibility to all – whether a startup or a team inside a big software development company.’
One can assume COVID-19 to be the motivation behind GitHub’s big move. Considering the teams within the IT sector are collaborating remotely, Friedman cleared that this wasn’t the case.
This is something we planned to do and have wanted to do for a long time—since essentially we did the acquisition—and getting to this point to do it took until now, when it became a high priority… But it’s definitely something that we wanted to do and, I mean, this is a big flippin’ deal.
The second guess was that GitHub made this move in order to get a certain competitive edge over its competitors; like GitLab, Atlassian, and BitBucket. However, that was also not the case. Friedman argued GitHub to be the “most accessible place for developers to create software.” In addition to this, he also declared GitHub to be best priced.
Either way, these changes have come as a pleasant surprise amid the pandemic that has rendered teams less productive and dependent entirely on such platforms for effective collaborations and code management, remotely.
In other news:
GitHub’s Mobile App: New Updates
Backtracking a little: GitHub much recently launched its very own mobile app that is designed to help developers manage their projects, respond to comments, review and merge pull requests. However, although the code is available for viewing, you cannot make edits within the app. It is free of cost and available for both platforms; Android and iOS.
Two of its key features include:
Notifications appear in an INBOX section, where the user can either save or mark them complete.
You can also use emojis to react to comments.
The official iOS and Android GitHub apps were updated with new features and improvements this week.
For iOS
- Redesigned issue creation flow with templates
- View commits list in pull requests or repos
- Switch branches when browsing repos
- Typing @ in a comment, issue, or review will autocomplete a list of users that are most relevant for you to choose from
Read more from the release notes on iOS update – here
For Android
- Typing @ will show a list of relevant users
- Your saved replied available for you to select from when commenting
- Easily switch branches when browsing repos
- Simple quoting and replying feature
Read more- here
Featured Image Creds: GitHub
admin
Add comment