title: Can open source code hosted at github be closed-source?
body: <p>Can the owner of an open source Github repository later decide to close it? What about other people's contribution to that project?</p>
  
  <p><strong>Edit</strong> - several people focused only on the legal aspects. Besides them there exists the technical question: Is it technically possible to take a public repository I own on Github, and turn it private at a later date? Assuming nobody created a public forked from it, will this in effect hide the source code for this project?</p>