According to linus' talk, git's whole point is branching. The point is that cost must not be an argument not to branch. The public-or-pay on github effectively

According to linus' talk, git's whole point is branching. The point is that cost must not be an argument not to branch. The public-or-pay on github effectively forces one to pay for starting a project. Starting a project should be free, easy and obvious. Github satisfies none of those. I don't agree that this is the main difference between github and bitbucket though. I would argue bitbucket is support for their other services (basecamp and whatnot), and team-based development is what you pay for. Github's features seem directly oriented to make github's administrator's jobs easier. Anything that is a bit of a problem, or doesn't fit in the original design doesn't get made at all or gets cut (ie. file attachments, project downloads). And "darling" features, like the network graph, that are unusable due to speed and bad UI get pushed into the spotlight, despite that.