Can open source code hosted at github be closed-source?

Question

Can the owner of an open source Github repository later decide to close it? What about other people\'s contribution to that project?

Edit - several peop

Answer 1

Is it technically possible to take a public repository I own on github, and turn it private at a later date?

You cannot have private repositories unless you pay for them. Github's Plans and Pricing state that you can sign up for the free public repositories, and upgrade/downgrade your account at any time, so they almost certainly have a way to make your free public repositories private by upgrading to a paid account, or they would have a tremendously broken business model.

After reading their help files, you can indeed mark a public repository as private if you have a paid account.

You could also just delete the repository from your free account, and start hosting the repository yourself if you want to stop sharing it.