The free tier of GitHub used to require the repositories to be public. Some time back, they also added free private repositories. Commercial licenses always all

The free tier of GitHub used to require the repositories to be public. Some time back, they also added free private repositories. Commercial licenses always allowed public and private repositories. And of course, once you set a repository as public, then forking and downloading allowed. Because that is, what the public flag means. Now, once you try to use the downloaded code, the actual license terms apply. But that shouldn't concern GitHub.