Comment by zelon88

Doesn't this kind of make sense? We are not dealing with personal property. We are dealing with term licensed software.

Github is a software distributing network. Like the app store, or Steam. They grant you access to licensed content, which you self license, and then they facilitate access for you. Based on the honor system. But some things can just be assumed to be true for the sake of simplicity and liability.

For example, If I make a repo public and then take it private the hashes that were obtained while it was open are still open. If I make a repo that's closed and open it, the whole thing is open.

If you fork a public repo and make private commits on it to a software distributor like Github, that is probably just going to end in a violation of the license. In this scenario, Github is saving you from yourself.