Git's quirks were surely a catalyst, especially helping the company to build momentum as Git grew. But Github added a lot more value than just that. I mean Sour

Git's quirks were surely a catalyst, especially helping the company to build momentum as Git grew. But Github added a lot more value than just that. I mean SourceForge was basically from the CVS + SVN era, and those tools were simpler and more intuitive, but SourceForge still served a great need. I'd say GitHub mainly succeeded because it put code first and overall focused on a great experience for developers to contribute and collaborate. SourceForge, in contrast, was heavily influenced by consumers wanting to download the latest version of FileZilla or some Linux games. And Google Code, for the brief time it was the main event, took things too far the other direction from SF. It was just too terse and the design too raw, as was customary for Google back then. It actually had the basis for a lot of the critical functionality, but lacked the kind of design flair GitHub has shown. I don't think it was ever seen as a potential profit center, so always seemed starved of the resources to compete with GitHub.