What are you going on about? You&#x27;re bringing in National Security Letters into a discussion about public vs. private repos on Github? Do you know what a threat model is?<p>I wager they&#x27;ve kept people using public by default for several reasons, among them these:<p>* It gives them something to upsell on. If you&#x27;re not completely poor, giving $7&#x2F;mo for a code repo is not unreasonable. Or, to price it in a more relatable manner, 1.5 mochas.<p>* It encourages the &quot;social coding&quot; ecosystem. I believe the network effect of Github is the strongest thing keeping people using it instead of dispersing across Bitbucket&#x2F;Gitlab&#x2F;etc. a lot more.<p>And as a simple point of disagreement, I think fewer people would pay for a Github client than a private Github repo. And why is charging for a client so much more ethical to you than charging for a service, with ongoing maintenance costs?