GitHub.com offers unlimited free public and private repositories for individuals. Free private accounts are limited to three collaborators. You can sign up for a paid account to have unlimited collaborators and some Pro features.
Public means that anyone can see your code, clone your code, and therefore use your code. GitHub is a huge supporter of open source software (OSS) and therefore encourages public, shared code. Open source software is more than just public, shared code (see Part 5). Because every line of code can be traced to an author, you still get credit for what you’ve written, but the goal is to keep the code available for anyone to use, extend, and explore.
The following steps guide you through signing up for a free, individual GitHub. com account:
- Go to GitHub.com and fill out the Sign Up form.
- Choose the plan you want.
For the purpose of this book, you can use the Free plan. You can always upgrade to a paid plan later if you decide you want to have more than three collaborators for your private repository and other pro GitHub features.
- Complete the brief survey.
This survey helps GitHub understand who is using the software and helps them support workflows specific to their users.
You’re now at the home page, shown in Figure 1-2.
Source: Guthals Sarah, Haack Phil (2019), GitHub for Dummies, Wiley.