* 2005 Linus invents git to get around licensing issues with bitkeeper. * 2005 Git into use shortly in the Linux kernel * late 2000s, SourceForge kinda got ba

* 2005 Linus invents git to get around licensing issues with bitkeeper. * 2005 Git into use shortly in the Linux kernel * late 2000s, SourceForge kinda got bad - trying to do too many things badly in complex interfaces * 2008 github comes around - it's simple and obvious (shiny, new), open source projects start to move over - exponential growth due to network effects * 2009 github gets big. That era of the web was all bootstrap themes with sites just implementing features as fast as possible, lots of fast growth * 2010 github has 1M repos * 2010 microsoft TFS goes git based Understanding what git replaced is a key for this. For me the main thing git did right in that period that made me want to change from the various SCMs I used at the time (CVS/SVN/SourceSafe/Perforce/TFS) was that source control becomes a part of development, done locally. There's only one machine (yours) that breaks when you break a merge / integration / rebase etc. The server is not really part of the "I'm done with my change, now share my change with others" loop that is part of every team based development project. This reduced that time significantly (things which often took hours or even days now took seconds). TL;DR - Workflow improvements, Linux, OSS network effects, Github's simple UI, world domination