Open source intelligence investigation of GitHub

GitHub is an online software source code hosting service platform that uses Git as version control software, written by developers Chris Wanstrath, P. J. Hyett, and Tom Preston Werner using Ruby on Rails. In 2018, GitHub was acquired by Microsoft Corporation.

GitHub offers both paid accounts and free accounts. Both accounts can create public or private code repositories, but paid users have more features. According to a survey of Git users in 2009, GitHub is the most popular site for Git access. In addition to allowing individuals and organizations to create and access code in its custody, it also offers features that facilitate socially shared software development, known as community features. GitHub also provides graphical features that provide an overview of how developers are working on the code base and how active the software is in development.

As of June 2022, GitHub has over 57 million registered users and 190 million code repositories (including at least 28 million open source code repositories), making it in fact the world's largest code hosting site and open source community. As of January 26, 2023, more than 100 million developers are already using GitHub.

Here is a flow chart of GitHub accounts for open source intelligence investigation. It will help your thinking of GitHub's open source intelligence investigation clearer.