The person you are responding to doesn't even want to make a free account yet expects to be able to use all of Github's services for free. That's some wild entitlement.
The disconnect here is unreal...
To be fair, definition of free depends. OPs argument was that they pay with data. That is not free if you think that you lose something. It is different question do we value it similarly.
The real problem is that a company like GitHub (now owned by Microsoft, of all companies, sheesh) has a strongly market-leading position in the idea of "publicly-hosted git repositories". Even if they were giving away everything fro free, and not tracking users, that would still be concerning.
If we have to do a restaurant analogy, it's like going to a restaurant (buffet?), opting out of premium, and still wanting access to a particular food item. It's not automatically ridiculous.
The treasures belong to humanity, not the museum, but they get the honour of hosting them, and that glory reflects on their reputation (which they use to sell commercial artifact-hosting services).
Entry is completely free, and for 16 years they gave you a map as you entered. But now some marketing genius has decided you don't get a map unless you give them your name and address and join their "friends of the museum" marketing programme.
These are not good signs for someone who wants to be custodian of the world's great treasures. I would argue it would be better for the world if the treasures were housed in local museums instead.
If they didn't, most (all?) of the major OSS projects that use them would have to find an alternative.
Those major OSS projects are why Github is the "central" OSS hosting place.
If they move on, then it's unclear if GitHub would remain all that central after a few years. "Probably not" is my thought, though I could be wrong. :)
