The BitBucket student discount and offer is much greater than the Micro discount (unlimited private repositories and collaborators). It would be a better idea to use BitBucket for private stuff instead and keep the public facing stuff in GitHub. Best of both worlds.

Like the parent comment I recently got my two-year expiration notice, but I've now graduated. (Although my edu email still works...) At the start of 2010 I did the BitBucket deal and did all my school stuff exclusively with them, until finally GitHub offered their version. (I like GitHub's interface better. Even after they did a big overhaul to a design I liked less.) Unlike GitHub though my BitBucket account is still Unlimited, which is awesome. Consequentially I like Atlassian as a company much more. :)

What parts of the overall ecosystem do you consider a necessity for private repos?

I like starting a school-related project as a private Github repo, then as time or permission allows for to open it up as a public repo. I've open-sourced a few things this way, whereas the couple Bitbucket repos have been left to languish since I don't have a limit on private repos or the ecosystem to share it with.

You can always push your private BitBucket repos to public Github ones -- just add another remote and push there.

Though you will have to leave your issues/wiki at BitBucket. Usually not a problem as you don't have one but still annoying.

I'm sure you know, but you can just clone from bitbucket, then push it to github. You keep all your history and everything. I can dig that there's friction, though.

Since I've had 3 replies I'd like to clarify a bit.

- Github has a large enough network effect that I can ask for another student's Github account and expect that they will have one. That lowers the friction to getting a new project started.

- I have moved a repo from BitBucket to Github, it is about as easy as the comments state.

- That said, I haven't needed more than 5 private repos at once, and the ability to visit one site (and one interface) to view all my work is easier than visiting two sites.

It is very easy to import a private BitBucket repo and make it public on GitHub.

Honest question, what do you need other than a server to host your repo?

Time and expertise to manage that server. It's cool that there's a Golang server out there that's a one binary solution to this among other offerings but some expertise and time is still required.

I would rather a student learn how to use git and the communities and tools around it first if both of these were options.

Nothing I said implied anything of the sort.

You implied that was all that was offered by these sites by asking a leading question instead of an open one.

Yeah, I was thinking about the time restrictions. A degree is 5 years in my country. I can see this being useful to students in the 3rd or 4th year, so one year is not enough. And being a student, I doubt they would start paying for those things. They need their money for books, food and partying :)

Hey - you can apply again, and they'll approve it again. I had the same problem (I'm not sure if this is okay though)

Oh awesome! Thanks for the heads up.

I renewed mine a few weeks ago after the 2 years expired. As long as you're still a student, just apply for renewal and they'll give it to you.

I also got the student pack right away, probably because of my student status.

You can reapply and you will get all the other stuff.