Does Go development require a paid Github account for private development?

I'm just getting started with Go. I use subversion for most of my development, but the Go tutorial seems to assume that everything is hosted on Github in either a public repository or a (paid) private repository. It looks like I'm forced to choose between:

1. committing to everybody having access to everything I write,
2. spending $7 a month for a private Github repository,
3. not using source code control or
4. losing the ability to use Go's get/import facility properly

Am I missing something here, or is this really the case?

go get supports most git, mercurial, bazaar & svn repos, so your own Git server, Bitbucket, GitLab, etc are all acceptable. This is touched on in the docs here: https://golang.org/doc/code.html#PackagePaths

Similarly, you can just create a $GOPATH/src/yourname/yourpkg dir, but you will have a harder time sharing your code with others.

In addition, you can use remote import paths (aka "vanity domains") to allow go get scott.com/pkg/usefulthing instead of directly pointing to GitHub, etc. Useful as you can avoid being tied to a single platform, should you wish to move in the future.

"go get" and the "import" statement both support several remote repositories, including:

• Bitbucket (Git, Mercurial)
• GitHub (Git)
• Launchpad (Bazaar)
• IBM DevOps Services (Git)

as well as syntax for code hosted on other servers:

> For code hosted on other servers, import paths may either be qualified
> with the version control type, or the go tool can dynamically fetch
> the import path over https/http and discover where the code resides
> from a <meta> tag in the HTML.
>
> To declare the code location, an import path of the form
>
> repository.vcs/path specifies the given repository, with or without
> the .vcs suffix, using the named version control system, and then the
> path inside that repository. The supported version control systems
> are:
>
> - Bazaar .bzr
> - Git .git
> - Mercurial .hg
> - Subversion .svn

You don't need to be on Github yourself to use other available repos on Github. Bitbucket offers unlimited private repositories. You can even choose to have a completely local git repository (not using any git hosting service), and still use repos available on Github.