Is GitHub used professionally?

They only use Github for public API documentation and code . As Antoine Desortes said, this is because the entire reason they are releasing or open sourcing these things is to help the community! (of which there is a strong one on Github). They don’t use Github for their real production code.

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Is using GitHub illegal?

If you want others to use, distribute, modify, or contribute back to your project, you need to include an open source license. For example, someone cannot legally use any part of your GitHub project in their code, even if it’s public, unless you explicitly give them the right to do so .

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