Can I give read-only access to a private repo (from a developer account)?

[Kamuela-Ahuna]

+1 

I'm trying to use Github as a place to keep my work and show potential employers. Would love to still have the ability to make it private and just give people access to view.

[bobf]

+1 - I have a couple of private repositories I want to share with friends but I don't want them to be able to write to them.

[DCGenomics]

+1 Extending this string, because of the work I do with public repos, it would be nice to be able to directly invite people to watch some public repos directly through github (as opposed to email or twitter), without giving them write access.  Maybe this is already possible?

[jdal]

+1 on read only access
The ability to view and not modify a private repository would be very valuable to our organization. 

[neodon]

I just went to add a collaborator to a private project with read-only access and was surprised that I couldn't do it. 

[noxuz]

+1 I want to show the code I have done from edX courses to potential employers, but I can't make them public due to edX's honor code, It would be usefull to have a way of granting by an URL, view only permission to a private repository, just like in google drive for example.

[jquentin]

+1

That's kind of an obvious need in my view.

My specific situation is I'm freelancing and want to give read access to my client.