As confirmed through its official blog , software development hosting company GitHub is making all of its core features available for free.

This has been made possible by the U.S.-based company’s decision to open its private repositories with unlimited collaborators to basically everyone who has an existing GitHub account.

Today we’re announcing free private repositories with unlimited collaborators for teams with GitHub Free, and reducing the price of our paid Team plan to $4 per user/month. All of the core GitHub features are now free for everyone. Learn more: https://t.co/fQ3r2ABtTR pic.twitter.com/HHOyG5ypgU — GitHub (@github) April 14, 2020

Before, teams who wished to take full advantage of GitHub for private development were required to avail of a paid plan. But now, the tech giant is throwing that idea right out the window.

A plan finally coming to fruition

One would think that GitHub’s decision to make its tools freely available for everyone to use was motivated by the ongoing coronavirus crisis. However, CEO Nat Friedman told TechCrunch that the company has been planning to do something like this for a while now.

“This is something we planned to and have wanted to do for a long time — since essentially we did the acquisition — and getting to this point to do it took until now, when it became a high priority,” Friedman said.

“But it’s definitely something that we wanted to do and, I mean, this is a big flippin’ deal,” he added.

What this means for dev teams everywhere

With every software developer on the face of the planet now enjoying free access to GitHub’s tools, whole teams now have a wider range of options when it comes to collaboration.

“This means teams can now manage their work together in one place: CI/CD, project management, code review, packages, and more,” Friedman wrote in the blog post announcement.

“We want everyone to be able to ship great software on the platform developers love.”

Price cuts to paid plans

Apart from making its core features free, GitHub has also decided to introduce changes to the pricing of its paid Team plan.

The current Team plan costing US$9 (AUS$14.22) per month per user has now been slashed to just US$4 per month per user. The reduction in prices is effective immediately as of GitHub’s announcement.

As for current Team plan subscribers, they should note that their bills will automatically be lowered moving forward.

Tech giants embracing “freemium” models

GitHub is far from the only tech company starting to offer free tools or services recently.

For instance, Google has just days ago that it will be continuing to offer the free version of its Hangouts platform, at least until September 30 of this year.

Another example is Microsoft 365 (formerly known as Office 365), which is now available for everyone.

Meanwhile, LinkedIn has also decided to make its job listing tools accessible by essential business, completely free of charge.

Featured image courtesy of GitHub.