Is an SSH Key Required to clone a public github account?

Question

Does github require all cloning, of both public and private repositories, to use an SSH public key? Maybe a better question, is can git clone a github repo without a ssh key at all.

Answer 1

You can use https protocol, as mentioned in "GitHub - Https access".
You would then use your GitHub login/password in a ~/.netrc file (which can be a security concern).
Note: on Windows, that would be an _netrc file.

Since GitHub supports smart http protocol (as detailed here), you can use that for cloning/pulling and for pushing.