GitHub
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| Basic information | |
|---|---|
| Founded | 2008-02-08 |
| Legal Structure | Subsidiary |
| Industry | Developer platform |
| Also known as | |
| Official website | https://www.github.com |
Github (GH) is a proprietary developer platform that allows developers to create, store, manage, and share their code. It uses Git to provide distributed version control and GH itself provides access control, bug tracking, software feature requests, task management, continuous integration, and wikis for every project. Headquartered in California, GH has been a subsidiary of Microsoft since 2018.
Consumer impact summary
[edit | edit source]- Privacy: GH is owned by Microsoft, raising questions about data usage. GH has recently engaged in aggressive Copilot integration.[1] Many projects such as the Gentoo Linux project, have left GH due to the privacy and security concerns associated with AI.[2][3][4]
- Transparency: While some tools like the
ghCLI are open-source,[5] the platform itself is closed-source. - Market control: GH is the platform that hosts the most important repositories in the world.[citation needed - or is it? (2026-05-11)] It's the standard-de-facto for hosting and managing source-code, often overshadowing platforms such as Codeberg and GitLab.
- Reliability: ever since Microsoft acquired it, GH's uptime has degraded.[6] Projects such as Ghostty have left GH because of this.[7] There have been multiple incidents (elaborated in the next section), such as Git-history corruption and security vulnerabilities. GH has apologized and they plan to improve the situation.[8]
Incidents
[edit | edit source]Questions about data usage (2024-present)
[edit | edit source]GH does not specifically tell you the data usage for AI with private repositories. This means that it might be using your data to train AI models by Microsoft like Copilot.[9] Previously, Copilot exposed vital private repositories from big companies, raising even more concerns.[10]
This is a list of all consumer-protection incidents this company is involved in. Any incidents not mentioned here can be found in the GitHub category.
Planned fees for self-hosted Action runners (2025-present)
[edit | edit source]In December 2025, GH announced a new $0.002 per minute "cloud platform charge" for developers using self-hosted GH Actions runners on private repositories. It was due to take effect on March 1 2026, but seems to be postponed indefinitely. [11]
Whitelisting of email domains on new accounts
[edit | edit source]
When creating a new account on the platform, GH restricts the use of emails from certain domains, such as to disallow the usage of email aliases. Which a user might use to preserve their privacy.
Buggy merge queue (2026, April)
[edit | edit source]On April 23, 2026, pull-requests (PRs) merged via merge-queue using the squash merge method produced incorrect merge commits when the merge group contained more than one PR. In affected cases, changes from previously merged PRs and prior commits were inadvertently reverted by subsequent merges.[12][13]
RCE via git push
[edit | edit source]A remote code execution vulnerability was found that allowed abusing git push commands to read and write data to any repository hosted by GH, including private ones.[14] GH fixed this bug quickly after it was reported to them.
Products
[edit | edit source]
- Enterprise
- Copilot
External links
[edit | edit source]References
[edit | edit source]- ↑ https://github.com/features/copilot (Archived)
- ↑ https://itsfoss.com/news/gentoo-github-switch-begins/ (Archived)
- ↑ https://www.linuxjournal.com/content/gentoo-charts-new-path-moving-away-github-toward-codeberg (Archived)
- ↑ Kelley, Andrew (2025-11-26). "Migrating from GitHub to Codeberg". ⚡ Zig Programming Language. Archived from the original on 2026-03-03. Retrieved 2026-03-16.
- ↑ "GitHub's official command line tool (source Git repository)". GitHub. 3 Oct 2019. Archived from the original on 28 Jan 2026. Retrieved 16 Sep 2025.
- ↑ https://damrnelson.github.io/github-historical-uptime/
- ↑ https://mitchellh.com/writing/ghostty-leaving-github
- ↑ https://github.blog/news-insights/company-news/an-update-on-github-availability/
- ↑ "What specific data exactly will be send to Copilot?". GitHub. Archived from the original on 12 May 2025. Retrieved 7 September 2025.
- ↑ "Copilot AI Exposes Private GitHub Code From Top Companies". digitalchew.com. Archived from the original on 26 Apr 2025.
- ↑ "Coming soon: simpler pricing and a better experience for GitHub Actions". GitHub. Archived from the original on 25 Mar 2026.
- ↑ https://www.githubstatus.com/incidents/zsg1lk7w13cf
- ↑ https://trunk.io/blog/what-happens-if-a-merge-queue-builds-on-the-wrong-commit
- ↑ https://www.wiz.io/blog/github-rce-vulnerability-cve-2026-3854