Git hosting services

GitHub

https://github.com/

It allows to create free of charge Gist repositories which are visible to people with the URL. There Gits are useful for smaller projects. They can be cloned using Git (but I'm not aware of actual limitations of Gits; it would be better to check some documentation or terms of use).

GitHub Enterprise

We are not focusing on paid option in this document, however the main audience of this document has free (already paid) access to the this service, so we will have a detail look also at this option.

GitHub Enterprise is a GitHub instance inside an organization which is paying GitHub for a license. Depending on organization, the usage including read access will be limited to the organization. However, with high probability, this is usually true and access can be limited in organization itself. Sharing projects with you collaborators, especially those out of the organization, could be then cumbersome or impossible.

For example, NCSU GitHub (https://github.ncsu.edu) is this case and has all the drawbacks above.

The advantage of this option is that one can have unlimited number of private repositories with unlimited number of collaborators. However, size limits may apply (to repositories, not collaborators) depending on an organization.

When you need to collaborate with various people this is not an option for you, although there are still ways of sharing which Git itself provides. The advantage for you is that you can create private repositories to test various Git or GitHub features and it is not visible.

Gitorious

https://gitorious.org/

It's fully open source (AGPL), anybody can install it on his or her own server, so you are independent on a provider. There is nothing special about having own Gitorious in an organization, it is just another sever application.

They discussed their terms of use with the Free Software Foundation.

Bitbucket

https://bitbucket.org

Can import a repository from any Git online repository 9 (including those which requires authorization) and other online repositories. Can also import all account repositories from GitHub (probably only github.com; but not tested).

Dropbox, Ubuntu One, ownCloud or similar services including your own shared network folder

All these file cloud services are similar and free of charge to a certain extent, and all support all major platforms. Files are by default private but you can share them with unlimited number of people (at least I haven't heard about any limitation).

However, the ownCloud service is different because ownCloud is a free and open source project and there are different providers with different pricing (including free of charge plans). There always should be a possibility (supported by the software itself) to migrate smoothly from one provider to another.