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. :)

BitBucket is lacking the overall ecosystem.

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.

Are you oblivious to the amount of open source work that happens on Github?

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.