I don't actually understand why anyone pays for github when it's so trivial to set up a central git repository on a $10/month VPS and you can have unlimited repositories.
Surely developers aren't that desperate for a nice UI for their git repos?! I assume that there are a bunch of web based repo browsing tools you could install for free if you were that hell bent on looking at your code in a web browser
I love the ease of UI. I like a graphical way to look through logs and diffs and Github does this better than anyone else. Beyond that, if I want a nice web based alternative, I would have to maintain it which I hate doing. Really, $7 is not a bad deal for letting them be the sys admins.
All that said, I am a cheap bastard. I have all public projects on a free Github account and a couple nonfree ones on my hosting account. I don't have a pretty front end, just the default gitweb. It is ugly, not as easy to use, but it works for my personal projects. If I ever needed it for a non-personal project, Github is much better since I will need to code, not maintain my own repos.
Surely developers aren't that desperate for a nice UI for their git repos?! I assume that there are a bunch of web based repo browsing tools you could install for free if you were that hell bent on looking at your code in a web browser