The incentives that creates are really bad: it encourages users to organize their code across the smallest number of repos, and I'd bet anything that larger repos are disproportionately more expensive for GitHub than smaller ones. It's very possible that a per-repo charge would make things worse.

You are way too optimistic. What will realistically happen is they charge $2 per month and the quality doesn't change. The $2 per month gross will go where it always goes: launches, exec salaries, shareholders.

I think GitHub leans on this free repos thing a lot for getting new users though. Like I could see people just moving to GitLab

Free private repos on github is relatively new, only introduced after a rise in popularity of gitlab (which has free private repos).

Seems like github is too popular for itself.

I know you said "relatively", but it's been seven and a half years: https://github.blog/changelog/2019-01-08-pricing-changes/

…and encountering the same issues most likely.

Fair, but the point is GitHub’s model is:

Free Users use GitHub => when a company needs source control => all their coders use GitHub => company buys expensive enterprise contract.

If there’s less of an advantage to using free GitHub then that funnel works less effectively.

GH isn't good enough to charge that much for its core services. 90% of its user base would just find better or cheaper alternatives, and the only ones remaining would be legacy enterprise codebases that are just impossible or too expensive to migrate.

What about $1/year per private repo?

80/20 rule would suggest that you don't need to apply $1 to all users, just those who create an excessive number of AI slop repos or make an excessive number of commits.

Could do similar for GH actions usage.