I suspect this has a lot to do with the architecture of git allowing relatively "dumb" servers. To run a git server, you only need the capacity to receive, serv

I suspect this has a lot to do with the architecture of git allowing relatively "dumb" servers. To run a git server, you only need the capacity to receive, serve and compare git hashes and blobs. For SVN at least (last I used it), the server is expected to perform all sorts of potentially expensive operations (esp. for large repos): diffs, merges, branches, etc. since the client does not have the full repo/history. Given at the time computing power was less cheap, it would mean that hosting SVN services incurred a non-trivial cost. (And IIRC CVS was so bad that I don't think anyone in their right mind should actually try to host a free/cheap service around it.) Also, initial versions of SVN was released around 2004, while git 1.0 was technically in 2005. It took a while for people to get used to git, but given its technical superiority (and its momentum given Linus' approval) and being less demanding on the server side to host, hosting for git was a correct decision to make anyways.