What use of GitHub are you talking about? The use of GitHub by @c-linkage at the top of the thread was, in fact, based on GitHub being free to use. And GitHub’s basic services are free to use. I really don’t know what you mean.

Your oft-repeated customer vs product platitude doesn’t seem to apply to GitHub, at least not to it’s founding and core product offering. You are the customer, and GitHub doesn’t advertise. It’s a freemium model, the free access is just a sort of loss leader to entice paid upgrades by you, the customer.

> The use of GitHub by @c-linkage at the top of the thread was, in fact, based on GitHub being free to use.

The mere fact that we're discussing this here is advertisement for Github's services. Q.e.d.

How so? And what’s the relevance to this thread?