I’m in love with GitHub and I don’t mind paying a few bucks a month to host private code repositories there. It’s not without its issues though, and I’ve often had trouble getting others to collaborate with me via GitHub for one reason or another. Desiring more control, I was thrilled when GitHub:FI was announced. Unfortunately, the licensing fees are staggering and put the service far out of my reach. Recently, my buddy Marcus Whitney had been messing around with Redmine and my interest was piqued by his results. I decided to jump in head first and try to build a reliable GitHub:FI alternative using an Ubuntu VPS, Git, Gitosis, Gmail (or Google Apps for Domains), and Bitnami’s Redmine Stack.

I have a check written out to me from a local Nashville company, drawn on their Bank of America account. I no longer have a personal BOA account (thankfully) but I’ve never had a problem cashing a BOA check at a BOA branch, since that’s a pretty standard transaction. Regions is notorious in my mind for charging $5 per-check if you don’t have a Regions account, which they upped to $7 about a month ago. This whole concept of charging a fee to cash checks drawn on their customers’ accounts is fairly new, and many bank customers don’t understand that their own checks are potentially costing their payee money. I for one would be enraged if I found out my bank was stealing money intended for the person to whom I wrote a check, but that’s just me.