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Yeah, but they may not have an account on github.

And I see more and more students using gitlab instead since they have free private repos

Students get free private repos on Github too with the education pack.

Oh it’s free, that’s all right then.

Many people don’t use cost as the sole measure of everything.

Sure, but the parent commenter explicitly mentioned free as a reason for using GitLab.

So then they can make a GitHub account... I don't see how that would be worse than having to make a custom HackMIT account.