CODEWITHSUNDEEP
githubgithub-organizations
automatix
automatix

Reputation: 14552

Is an organisation on GitHub a user or just a repositories container that needs a user?

As GitHub user I can create an organization. What i don't understand -- Is an organisation independent?

Upvotes: 12

Views: 10623

Answers (3)

Stokely
Stokely

Reputation: 15927

GitHub "Organizations" act like "Users" in some cases. So the confusion is real.

Example, if you fork a repository in GitHub from an Organization instead of from a personal User account, the owners of the repo in the Organization can not only see your fork and any changes but can delete your fork. Not good.

Organization owners of a repository that has been forked have admin permission to forks created in personal user namespaces, including the ability to delete the fork and its branches.

This means that permission inheritance rules change based on not just private or public GitHub repo settings, but on whether you use a personal versus an organizational account. Personal accounts are not truly users that have ownership of their code. Organizations feels like a special type of Administrator to me, with the Organization now overriding all personal permissions over code, if they choose. Unless the person that forked the Organization's code is ALSO an Organization, you risk losing all rights to code changes in your fork.

For this reason, it is best to see Organizations as a higher level subtype of Admin User (not owner) so you understand the permissions assigned to it and the powers it holds over everything under it.

Upvotes: -1

user15623002
user15623002

Reputation: 21

An organization is not a user, it doesn't have a password and you cannot log into an organization like you can to a personal/user account. But an organization can own repositories, which can be made accessible to actual persons/users who have passwords and can login.

Upvotes: 2

Jeremy Allard
Jeremy Allard

Reputation: 321

The biggest difference between user accounts and organizations is team-based permissions for the repositories owned by the organization.

This means you can have team members under your organization and let them interact more aggressively with your repositories compared to plain contributors.

I'd say the concept of a GitHub organization is pretty independent from a plain GitHub user - they aren't the same thing. See for example how you can convert a user to an organization https://help.github.com/articles/converting-a-user-into-an-organization/

With that being said, organizations have what they call owners. You can have multiple owners (i.e you can invite people to be owner of your organization along with you) but an organization cannot have zero owner.

For example, when you create an organization while logged under your account, the default first owner of the organization you just created is yourself.

Here's a more detailed list about the differences between a user and an organization https://help.github.com/articles/what-s-the-difference-between-user-and-organization-accounts/

Upvotes: 13

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