Does GitHub own your code?

GitHub has pretty secure end-to-end transmission , and you can check the integrity of the repo with checksums to virtually eliminate the man-in-the-middle stuff.

You’re under no obligation to choose a license . However, without a license, the default copyright laws apply, meaning that you retain all rights to your source code and no one may reproduce, distribute, or create derivative works from your work.

We’re excited about these updates to our Free and Enterprise offerings: GitHub Free now includes unlimited private repositories . For the first time, developers can use GitHub for their private projects with up to three collaborators per repository for free.

When you put code on GitHub, you retain all the copyright to your code . However, you do grant GitHub a license to host the code, and you also allow GitHub users a set of rights – namely the ability to look at, and fork your repository.

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.

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 .