I think GitHub leans on this free repos thing a lot for getting new users though. Like I could see people just moving to GitLab

GH isn't good enough to charge that much for its core services. 90% of its user base would just find better or cheaper alternatives, and the only ones remaining would be legacy enterprise codebases that are just impossible or too expensive to migrate.

80/20 rule would suggest that you don't need to apply $1 to all users, just those who create an excessive number of AI slop repos or make an excessive number of commits.

Could do similar for GH actions usage.

What about $1/year per private repo?

The incentives that creates are really bad: it encourages users to organize their code across the smallest number of repos, and I'd bet anything that larger repos are disproportionately more expensive for GitHub than smaller ones. It's very possible that a per-repo charge would make things worse.

You are way too optimistic. What will realistically happen is they charge $2 per month and the quality doesn't change. The $2 per month gross will go where it always goes: launches, exec salaries, shareholders.

So if I want to push an existing project with 1000 commits to GitHub for the first time, I gotta do it over the course of 10 months?

Encouraging big commits seems antithetical to the idea of git in general.