private repo using a large amount of disk storage for teaching purpose #2232

qkzk commented 2025年11月25日 20:04:05 +01:00

Comment

Hello,

I teach CS in high school and I used to share work with students trough a private repo hosted on github.

For some reason github and a lot of alternatives are now blocked. My school can't do anything about it. Don't ask me why.

I cloned my repo over here and I'd like to ask my student to join as team member so they can keep working.

For obvious reasons, I don't want my repo to be public.

When I cloned the repo I got this message :

Your private repo uses up a large amount of disk storage, while all content should ideally be public and licensed under an OSI- > or FSF-approved Free Software licence.
Please refer to our ToS and the FAQ about software licenses and private repositories.
Thank you for considering to release this repo to the public or reducing your required disk space for this repo.

The repo uses about 108MB of disk space, which is quite a lot indeed. Most of it comes from pdf files of old past exams.

Since I won't turn this repo public, should I be worried about it and move somewhere else ?

### Comment Hello, I teach CS in high school and I used to share work with students trough a private repo hosted on github. For some reason github and a lot of alternatives are now blocked. My school can't do anything about it. Don't ask me why. I cloned my repo over here and I'd like to ask my student to join as team member so they can keep working. For obvious reasons, I don't want my repo to be public. When I cloned the repo I got this message : > Your private repo uses up a large amount of disk storage, while all content should ideally be public and licensed under an OSI- > or FSF-approved Free Software licence. > Please refer to our ToS and the FAQ about software licenses and private repositories. > Thank you for considering to release this repo to the public or reducing your required disk space for this repo. The repo uses about 108MB of disk space, which is quite a lot indeed. Most of it comes from pdf files of old past exams. Since I won't turn this repo public, should I be worried about it and move somewhere else ?

qkzk commented 2025年11月25日 20:19:12 +01:00

I should add that this repo shouldn't be very active. Students download template code file, pdfs and other text files.
They won't push their work there.

I should add that this repo shouldn't be very active. Students download template code file, pdfs and other text files. They won't push their work there.

Joshix commented 2025年11月25日 21:53:49 +01:00

For obvious reasons

What reasons?

I think educational resources should be freely available. I've seen professors publishing their materials publicly under creative commons.

> For obvious reasons What reasons? I think educational resources should be freely available. I've seen professors publishing their materials publicly under creative commons.

gedankenstuecke commented 2025年11月26日 00:26:33 +01:00

@Joshix wrote in #2232 (comment):

I think educational resources should be freely available. I've seen professors publishing their materials publicly under creative commons.

The case here isn't university students though, but (likely underage) highschool students. Who, based from the description might also be asked to actively work with the repos and not just consume them? If so, there will be additional data privacy & protection concerns which are different to university level.

@Joshix wrote in https://codeberg.org/Codeberg/Community/issues/2232#issuecomment-8481753: > I think educational resources should be freely available. I've seen professors publishing their materials publicly under creative commons. The case here isn't university students though, but (likely underage) highschool students. Who, based from the description might also be asked to actively work with the repos and not just consume them? If so, there will be additional data privacy & protection concerns which are different to university level.

Joshix commented 2025年11月26日 00:35:26 +01:00

Forcing them to create an account with a random service sounds like a bad idea than.

They won't push their work there.

Makes it sound like they won't actively work with the repo, and just consume it.

Forcing them to create an account with a random service sounds like a bad idea than. > They won't push their work there. Makes it sound like they won't actively work with the repo, and just consume it.

qkzk commented 2025年11月26日 10:17:22 +01:00

Hello,

Thanks for your replies.
The repo holds basic exercises which should be done without much help and should take a few hours.
It's quite difficult to find exercises like that in French.

There's ton of books and courses for graduate students which I can't use since my students are total beginners.

If I publish those someone somewhere will publish solutions.

I don't use those exercises every day but I need them when things go south. It took me years to write them and I can't trust my students not to search for solutions online since they're high school students.
You might say AI might solve them easily and it's true but in student mind it's completely different to Google for some help (it's still working...) or ask a chatbot (it's cheating).

Once I make this repo public somewhere, I'm cooked and I can't use this work anymore.

---

They won't "work" with the repo but they'll consume it to download courses or pdfs.
They'll never push anything on it.

They're shouldn't be privacy concerns about personal data. When they share work with me we use dedicated tools and not this repo.

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Having the student register somewhere isn't the best thing but is mandatory for every CS teacher in my country since we have no other solution. I want them to be familiar with the basics of git and version control and I believe a web interface is a good first step since it's something they're familiar with.

I can't ask them to use the command line. Some of them use their parents computer, others aren't able to navigate in a filetree with cd / ls etc.

---

Thanks for your questions, it's always a thing to think about those choices.

Hello, Thanks for your replies. The repo holds basic exercises which should be done without much help and should take a few hours. It's quite difficult to find exercises like that in French. There's ton of books and courses for graduate students which I can't use since my students are total beginners. If I publish those someone somewhere will publish solutions. I don't use those exercises every day but I need them when things go south. It took me years to write them and I can't trust my students not to search for solutions online since they're high school students. You might say AI might solve them easily and it's true but in student mind it's completely different to Google for some help (it's still working...) or ask a chatbot (it's cheating). Once I make this repo public somewhere, I'm cooked and I can't use this work anymore. --- They won't "work" with the repo but they'll consume it to download courses or pdfs. They'll never push anything on it. They're shouldn't be privacy concerns about personal data. When they share work with me we use dedicated tools and not this repo. --- Having the student register somewhere isn't the best thing but is mandatory for every CS teacher in my country since we have no other solution. I want them to be familiar with the basics of git and version control and I believe a web interface is a good first step since it's something they're familiar with. I can't ask them to use the command line. Some of them use their parents computer, others aren't able to navigate in a filetree with cd / ls etc. --- Thanks for your questions, it's always a thing to think about those choices.