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I think the current answer fails to mention two important things: 1. GitHub. 2. Linus himself wrote it (the kernel previously used BitKeeper but that never go

I think the current answer fails to mention two important things: 1. GitHub. 2. Linus himself wrote it (the kernel previously used BitKeeper but that never got any real traction AFAIK). Having said that, I think this phrase totally nails it: "If it's good enough for the Linux kernel, it's good enough for you" is a very convincing argument.

debacle 14y ago
Or, from another perspective, "Linux uses it, so we should too!"
- jamesdterry 14y ago
  No one ever got fired for going with Linus ;-)
ashishgandhi 14y ago
GitHub was founded in 2008. The spike is in 2010-01. That's what the question mentions too.
- shantanubala 14y ago
  I'd argue that GitHub became really good 2010-01. It takes a certain number of early adopters to group together before the social features finally become useful for everyone.
  - wyuenho 14y ago
    That also happened to be the time when people REALLY wanted to use DVCS but Google Code lacks private repo ability and BitBucket was also getting really unstable. BitBucket was far more stable than Github the years prior to 2010. Mercurial also had a whole lot more GUIs to choose from and worked great on Windows. For the longest time Github just wouldn't send a tar ball when you clicked the download button. And then around 2010, BitBucket was doing a lot of stuff behind the scene and the service was down a lot. A lot of basic features just wouldn't work. They were probably getting ready to sell to Atlassian. I think that's the main #1 reason Git and Github took off. Another one is Linus' diatribe on SVN. That video on youtube's been viewed millions of times. The video really got the Linux fanboys jumping around all excited even though its command line interface sucks and didn't work quite well on Windows.
- slashdotdash 14y ago
  > Just to make clear, this graph show the installation of git on debian systems. Around the time the spike happens the Debian package was renamed from git-core to git. Maybe people found the package easier now that the name reflected the software. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/177892 http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/177892
- nikcub 14y ago
  that is what network effects look like for eg. it is comparable to the chart of Facebook growth[0] [0] http://www.nathaninfocus.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/01/Facebook-Growth-Chart.jpg http://www.nathaninfocus.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/01/Face...
- garenp 14y ago
  Before that time, git lacked http support, which means a large population behind firewalls couldn't use it. From memory, that happened sometime in December 2009, which correlates very closely with that graph.
- halefx 14y ago
  Actually the spike is in 2010-04. I don't know that it's really related, but Drupal began switching from CVS to Git in 2010-03. I know a lot of people (myself included) looked at Git for the first time because of that.
pdw 14y ago
I wonder how big a factor Windows is. I remember that in 200x several projects (e.g. Mozilla and Java) chose Mercurial over Git because of Git's poor Windows support. At which point did Git become usable on Windows?
- _ikke_ 14y ago
  My first encounter with git was in about 2009 on windows, and I don't recall it being unusable.
enobrev 14y ago
As a single data point, I chose git due to github around late 2010 and consequently moved a couple of my clients (and current employer) over to git/hub. I personally still prefer bzr's cli.

debacle 14y ago

Or, from another perspective, "Linux uses it, so we should too!"

jamesdterry 14y ago
No one ever got fired for going with Linus ;-)

ashishgandhi 14y ago

GitHub was founded in 2008. The spike is in 2010-01. That's what the question mentions too.

shantanubala 14y ago
I'd argue that GitHub became really good 2010-01. It takes a certain number of early adopters to group together before the social features finally become useful for everyone.
- wyuenho 14y ago
  That also happened to be the time when people REALLY wanted to use DVCS but Google Code lacks private repo ability and BitBucket was also getting really unstable. BitBucket was far more stable than Github the years prior to 2010. Mercurial also had a whole lot more GUIs to choose from and worked great on Windows. For the longest time Github just wouldn't send a tar ball when you clicked the download button. And then around 2010, BitBucket was doing a lot of stuff behind the scene and the service was down a lot. A lot of basic features just wouldn't work. They were probably getting ready to sell to Atlassian. I think that's the main #1 reason Git and Github took off. Another one is Linus' diatribe on SVN. That video on youtube's been viewed millions of times. The video really got the Linux fanboys jumping around all excited even though its command line interface sucks and didn't work quite well on Windows.
slashdotdash 14y ago
> Just to make clear, this graph show the installation of git on debian systems. Around the time the spike happens the Debian package was renamed from git-core to git. Maybe people found the package easier now that the name reflected the software. http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/177892 http://programmers.stackexchange.com/a/177892
nikcub 14y ago
that is what network effects look like for eg. it is comparable to the chart of Facebook growth[0] [0] http://www.nathaninfocus.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/01/Facebook-Growth-Chart.jpg http://www.nathaninfocus.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/01/Face...
garenp 14y ago
Before that time, git lacked http support, which means a large population behind firewalls couldn't use it. From memory, that happened sometime in December 2009, which correlates very closely with that graph.
halefx 14y ago
Actually the spike is in 2010-04. I don't know that it's really related, but Drupal began switching from CVS to Git in 2010-03. I know a lot of people (myself included) looked at Git for the first time because of that.

pdw 14y ago

I wonder how big a factor Windows is. I remember that in 200x several projects (e.g. Mozilla and Java) chose Mercurial over Git because of Git's poor Windows support. At which point did Git become usable on Windows?

_ikke_ 14y ago
My first encounter with git was in about 2009 on windows, and I don't recall it being unusable.

enobrev 14y ago

As a single data point, I chose git due to github around late 2010 and consequently moved a couple of my clients (and current employer) over to git/hub. I personally still prefer bzr's cli.