Making a git project read only

Question

I just finished an open source project for the company I was interning with. There, SVN was used to manage the project and I made all commits to the repository I was assigned to.

I am now interested in hosting the work I did on Github. Even though I can easily add the project to Github, I am concerned about licensing issues. I had a talk with my project supervisor and he said it would be better if I let the project be on the company repository only, as I suspected. He is right of course, but all my projects are on Github and when I need to show someone the work I have done, whether for my next job or internship, I want it all to be a centralized place. And being an undegrad student, showing the work I did whether as a hobbyist project or otherwise matters a lot (it was what got me the internship in the first place)

Is there any way I can make my project read-only, so as no commits can be made? This way I can ensure my company is OK with it since I can convince them. Their only problem with me hosting the project on Github is that it would make it difficult for them to supervise the changes, which I agree is a valid reason. Or is there any way to sync the commits between the Github project and the company repository (of course I have commit access to it and a stranger won't).

I hope I have made it clear why I want to do this. Of course I can give the SVN link but I had be very happy to have everything in one place.

Answer 1

Github doesn't allow other people to make changes to your project unless you permit them. There are two ways to modify a project on github:

1. Be given a commit bit by the administrator
2. Fork the project, make a commit on your own copy, then submit a "pull request" to the administrator of the original, who will consider pulling your commit back to the central repo.

As you can see, if you put your project on github you still have full control over your source. [You can't stop people forking your project and managing their own version, but if it's open source, you couldn't stop it anyway.]

Answer 2

If you pay for a GitHub account, you can make the repository private, so no one else can see it or fork it. There is no systematic way I'm aware of to restrict your ability to commit to a Repo you own.