The problem with betting on the underdog is that the internet is still young. GitHub has momentum; it may not have a guaranteed long-term future, but as of now

The problem with betting on the underdog is that the internet is still young. GitHub has momentum; it may not have a guaranteed long-term future, but as of now it is the open source project forge with the best long-term outlook. If you had bet on Google Code, your project is at least still accessible today. If you bet on Sourceforge, the same is true, although for a period of time you could’ve had your own project page distributing malware. (I am aware that it has changed hands since these incidents, but this still happened nonetheless.) GitLab also seems like an OK bet… but from there on out, it feels like you have to be careful. A random Gitea instance is never a safe bet. Even if you run it on your own, you don’t know how long you’ll be around to keep the lights on; life is fragile. I still find Golang’s module cache mechanism to be bothersome in some regards, but I think they were on the money with their concerns. It’s probably the only way modules can stay “decentralized” with confidence. But, that solution requires at least one central entity that is trusted and can shoulder the costs of such a service; and it only solves a narrow portion of the problem, relevant to the module system of a single programming language. There’s no easy way out; nothing is truly autonomous. Explicitly organized groups of people running a legitimate business probably have a better long-term outlook than a band of cypherpunks running P2P services, or what have you. (Believe me, it pains me to say it, because I sure wish it wasn’t so.) In this way, I think it’s obvious why people pick GitHub. It’s because it’s in the best position of the best segment for code hosting. It’s backed by a billion dollar multinational corporation. It’s been around the block a few times and is a robust business of its own. Even if your concern isn’t longevity, GH is still giving you the best standing as far as network effects go. It’s just hard to blame anyone.