Difference between organisation member and outside collaborator in github

Question

The github docs are a bit unclear about the semantic difference between organisation member and outside collaborator. What is the distinction?

I run an github organisation for my school. I create repos and allocate them to students. Should the students be members of the org or outside collaborators?

Answer 1

This particular GitHub Help Doc page may help clear it up. Outside collaborators only have access to repositories that their team membership allows. Outside collaborators cannot create teams or view all the organization's members and teams.

Outside collaborators and bot accounts will count toward your organization's total of paid seats if they are given access to a private repository.

Answer 2

Many people are confused by the real-world usage of outside collaborators. Here is the real-world use case.

Your company launches 2 projects, called PA and PB. They are maintained by 2 different "outside collaborators/teams" named TA (for PA), TB (for PB).

Organization members are able to see any projects created within the organization. There is no way to change this, at least for now.

Outside collaborator is used to restricting the visibility of packages within an organization. For instance, invite team TA to project PA, team TB to project PB, and NOT adding any of team TA or team TB as an organization member.