A merchant account is in the cards, though we don't know where yet (and haven't finished the process of incorporation, so can't get one yet).
At some point we might use Exceptional (I like the look of it, but I'm not a coder so I'm not making the decision of whether we need it or not) and if Get Satisfaction proves useful perhaps pay for a plan there. We'll see.
With unfuddle you can even get a (small) free private repo.
However, it is dirt simple to set up a git repository for use by a few people on a box where they have accounts anyway.
cd /var/local/
mkdir myapp
... appropriate permissions, add a few files ...
git init
Just my $0.02
* Since you connect to the server anyway, that one's open.
* Security patches is a regular apt-get update and not much more.
* Ticket management... ok, that's an extra, but github still doesn't have a ticket tracking system, does it?
Also, my point depends on an assumption that may not be true for everyone: that you have your own server that you run.
I could manage all of that stuff directly, but I shouldn't because I don't do it all day long which means that either I'll a) do it wrong or b) have to do several hours of research to make sure I don't do it wrong or c) routine multi-hour interruptions when things break or d) combine a+b+c because that's what will happen in reality.
It's because of this that we outsource the following things that we could do ourselves:
* Email hosting (Tucows)
* DNS servers (Tucows)
* VoIP (Vonage)
* 800# (Onebox)
* External system monitoring (Pingdom)
* General server sysadmin (a friend of mine)
* StreamSend (Email Marketing - not that good, but dealing with RBL and email deliverability is worse)
* Payflow Pro (credit card gateway - BAD customers service o/w OK)
It costs some REAL money, but saves much more in opportunity costs, headache, etc. Plus our services improve as these companies improve offerings.
We only directly manage things that can save us TONS of money or are strategically important. Here's the list of those things:
* SugarCRM
* RT (bug tracking. was outsourced but too $$ so we moved in house)
* Internal system monitoring
* Hosting (we run our own systems since we have tons of custom dependencies)
I guess it might be okay to run git on my mail server. Except I don't have a mail server: That's outsourced. (Way too much trouble to run for oneself.) All I run for myself is local machines (not about to serve from those -- poor uptime, firewalls are a pain) and web/database servers, and I don't want the constraint of even having to remember that git is running on one of them. I want a git setup that is out of sight, out of mind, and far away from my bumbling sysadmin (a.k.a. "me").
And we're haggling over the price of github, here. It's dirt cheap.
One point, however:
> You can't switch server hostnames or IPs without potentially affecting your git users.
Yes, you can. Computers should have:
* One or more IP addresses.
* A hostname that is attached to that computer, and only that computer, such as thor.example.com
* Hostnames that are attached to services on computers, such as git.example.com, mail.example.com, www.example.com, and so on. You can change these to point where they're needed, so as to not cause any interruptions or problems for your users.
> And we're haggling over the price of github, here. It's dirt cheap.
Sure, but I'm cheap, and for my setup, it's money I can save, and it just seems weird to pay for something that's so easy to set up.
But if it's a labour of love? Priceless...