Why are developers so myopic around big tech? Of course they can. Facebook can use your private photos. It's in their terms and services. Cloud providers have more generous terms.
The response has always been they won't do that because they have a reputation to manage. The further they grow the further they control the narrative so the less this matters.
Wait until you find out they sell your data or use your data to sell products.
Why in 2021 are we giving Microsoft all of our code? It seems like the 90s, 2000s never happened and we all trust microsoft. They have a free editor and a free operating system that sends packets of activity the user does back to microsoft but that's okay.. we want to help improve their products? We trust them.
Of course. A "private" repo is still on their servers. It's only private from other GitHub users, not the actual site administrators. This is the same in any website, of course the admins can see everything. If you truly want privacy, use your own git servers.
Why do you think people care so much about end-to-end encrypted messaging?
Yes, the concept of a "private" repo is enforced only by GitHub's service. A bug in their auth code could lead to others having access. A warrant could lead to others having access. Etc.
yes, that's what that specific section means, but as always with these documents you can't just extract a single section, you need to take the document as a whole (and usually, more than one document - ToS privacy policy are usually different)
these documents are structured as granting the service provider extremely broad rights, and then the rest of the document takes away portions of those rights. so in this case they claim the right to share any code in any repo with anyone, and then somewhere else they specify which code they won't share, and with whom they won't share it.
Fun fact: Every major cloud provider has a similar blanket term. For example, Google doesn't need to license music to use for promotional content, because YouTube's terms grant them a worldwide license to use uploaded content for purposes including promoting their services, and music labels can't afford to not be on YouTube. (It's probable even uploading content to protect it, as in Content ID, would arguably cause this term to apply.)
It all comes down to the nuance of whether the usage counts as part of protecting or improving (or promoting) their services and what other terms are specified.
