Managing benefits/drawbacks of private repos

Question

As someone who is just beginning to think about using private repositories, if I understand correctly, they basically let you make commits in private until you are ready to open-source your app/program to the world and then, once you do, your entire Github/Bitbucket commit history becomes visible to everyone (like as if you were developing out in the open the entire time).

Now what happens if someone open-sources something before you do and claims provenance in the field/area/app/etc.? Can you basically open-source your software in return (or contact the authors directly) and "counter-claim" provenance? Obviously, the open-source person wouldn't have known about your existence since you're developing in private mode, so whose "right-of-way" would it be in such a hypothetical situation?

I can clearly see the utility of private repos for potential forking by competitors who have many more resources than you do and can hypothetically out-code you to the finish line and/or refactor your code significantly (potentially without attribution), but beyond that I don't really see much of a direct benefit to software development in private repos. Can anyone clarify the above points for me? For the record, I have investigated related posts like: https://softwareengineering.stackexchange.com/questions/87577/whats-the-benefit-of-having-a-private-repository-for-personal-projects

Answer 1

Private repository is about visibility: visible only by you or by all.

It is not about content: you can store anything (not too big) in a Git repo (public or private): a project, or just a collection of files. It is not limited to " software development". You can keep private simple text files representing notes you want to remember, for instance.

Typically, the three ways of claiming ownership of an open-source project, as described in "Ownership and Open Source" by Eric S. Raymond, have nothing to do with private/public repo.

• One, the most obvious, is to found the project. When a project has had only one maintainer since its inception and the maintainer is still active, custom does not even permit a question as to who owns the project.

(See also "How do I navigate to the earliest commit in a Github repository?")

• The second way is to have ownership of the project handed to you by the previous owner.
• The third way to acquire ownership of a project is to observe that it needs work and the owner has disappeared or lost interest.

So this is more about communication, and less about repository management.