Well, Github did use decentralized data storage -- the wikis are implemented as directories full of markdown files. You can clone it to your PC and view locally

Well, Github did use decentralized data storage -- the wikis are implemented as directories full of markdown files. You can clone it to your PC and view locally, push/pull the changes, etc... In addition, you can use your repository as wiki directly -- with markdown rendering, and "edit" button in web UI, just having "docs/" full of .md files gives you pretty passable wiki. But it seems that very few people care. How many people mirror wikis of their favorite projects, or backup their issues? I know only one such person, myself. I think that for some types of data, distributed model with operations like "clone with full history", "pull", "merge", etc... makes very little sense. For example access control -- why would you ever want to clone this? If I set up a mirror of repo, I don't want to give their authors access by default. Same goes for discussions -- for a good discussion you want all members to see their own replies. Having original post appear on sites A, B, C; and reply 1 on sites A, B while reply 2 appears on sites B, C will be super confusing to users, and will likely just cause platform to be abandoned. And a lot of times, ticket list is better off shared, so people can coordinate the work they do even if they have their own fork. Once you realize a lot of supporting services need to be centralized, all you can use "git" for is for data distribution. Is git better than SMTP for mailing list discussions? Is git better that SMTP / REST API for ticket list? Maybe, maybe not. But ultimately it does not matter, because most people do not care about mirroring stuff locally, and those who do care, can already achieve it.