<story><title>Tell HN: GitHub will delete your private repo if you lose access to the original</title><text>I was surprised to see this in my email today:&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt; Your private repository baobabKoodaa&amp;#x2F;laaketutka-scripts (forked from futurice&amp;#x2F;how-to-get-healthy) has been deleted because you are no longer a collaborator on futurice&amp;#x2F;how-to-get-healthy.&lt;p&gt;That was an MIT-licensed open source project I worked on years ago. We published the source code for everyone to use, so I certainly did not expect to lose access to it just because someone at my previous company has been doing spring cleaning at GitHub! I had a 100% legal fork of the project, and now it&amp;#x27;s gone... why?&lt;p&gt;Turns out I don&amp;#x27;t even have a local copy of it anymore, so this actually caused me data loss. I&amp;#x27;m fine with losing access to this particular codebase, I&amp;#x27;m not using HN as customer support to regain access. I just wanted everyone to be aware that GitHub does this.</text></story><parent_chain><item><author>evouga</author><text>This doesn’t make any sense to me.&lt;p&gt;My private forks are *&lt;i&gt;mine*&lt;/i&gt; and I most certainly do not want GitHub guessing at whether and when to permanently delete them without my consent.&lt;p&gt;Companies of course have the right to manage access to their proprietary source code, for example by only giving access to corporate accounts under their control and reclaiming those accounts when an employee leaves.</text></item><item><author>tux3</author><text>I think this is under the assumption of &amp;quot;employee has a private fork of the company repo, then leaves, employee should not keep the fork&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;So when &amp;quot;removed as a collaborator&amp;quot; which apparently includes the original being deleted, you lose access to the main repo and all forks, even yours. As if leaving a company.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>vetrom</author><text>Any (quite relevant actually) discussion of SCM policy and management aside, you&amp;#x27;ve got to remember: There is no &amp;#x27;cloud&amp;#x27;, it&amp;#x27;s just somebody else&amp;#x27;s computer.</text></comment>
<story><title>Tell HN: GitHub will delete your private repo if you lose access to the original</title><text>I was surprised to see this in my email today:&lt;p&gt;&amp;gt; Your private repository baobabKoodaa&amp;#x2F;laaketutka-scripts (forked from futurice&amp;#x2F;how-to-get-healthy) has been deleted because you are no longer a collaborator on futurice&amp;#x2F;how-to-get-healthy.&lt;p&gt;That was an MIT-licensed open source project I worked on years ago. We published the source code for everyone to use, so I certainly did not expect to lose access to it just because someone at my previous company has been doing spring cleaning at GitHub! I had a 100% legal fork of the project, and now it&amp;#x27;s gone... why?&lt;p&gt;Turns out I don&amp;#x27;t even have a local copy of it anymore, so this actually caused me data loss. I&amp;#x27;m fine with losing access to this particular codebase, I&amp;#x27;m not using HN as customer support to regain access. I just wanted everyone to be aware that GitHub does this.</text></story><parent_chain><item><author>evouga</author><text>This doesn’t make any sense to me.&lt;p&gt;My private forks are *&lt;i&gt;mine*&lt;/i&gt; and I most certainly do not want GitHub guessing at whether and when to permanently delete them without my consent.&lt;p&gt;Companies of course have the right to manage access to their proprietary source code, for example by only giving access to corporate accounts under their control and reclaiming those accounts when an employee leaves.</text></item><item><author>tux3</author><text>I think this is under the assumption of &amp;quot;employee has a private fork of the company repo, then leaves, employee should not keep the fork&amp;quot;&lt;p&gt;So when &amp;quot;removed as a collaborator&amp;quot; which apparently includes the original being deleted, you lose access to the main repo and all forks, even yours. As if leaving a company.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>naikrovek</author><text>&amp;gt; My private forks are &lt;i&gt;mine&lt;/i&gt;&lt;p&gt;Not if you create them using the &amp;quot;Fork&amp;quot; button in the UI.&lt;p&gt;Since this behavior has yet again surprised many people, here is the documentation:  &lt;a href=&quot;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;docs.github.com&amp;#x2F;en&amp;#x2F;pull-requests&amp;#x2F;collaborating-with-pull-requests&amp;#x2F;working-with-forks&amp;#x2F;what-happens-to-forks-when-a-repository-is-deleted-or-changes-visibility&quot; rel=&quot;nofollow&quot;&gt;https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;docs.github.com&amp;#x2F;en&amp;#x2F;pull-requests&amp;#x2F;collaborating-with-...&lt;/a&gt;</text></comment>