"I find it somewhat odd that, given git's emphasis on distributed version control, we see so many git users have centralized themselves quite heavily on GitHub.

"I find it somewhat odd that, given git's emphasis on distributed version control, we see so many git users have centralized themselves quite heavily on GitHub." It isn't odd. Almost nobody understands distributed version control, and fewer actually need it. A big part of the reason that GitHub is popular is that git is way too complicated for most people to use. They don't understand the CLI or the concepts, and need a shiny web UI to abstract the (admittedly terrible) interface. Most people need branching, merging and committing to a canonical repository. Even the groups that could theoretically benefit from distributed repos (larger, far-flung organizations), tend to be hamstrung by the complexity that they introduce, and therefore in practice tend set up a small number of canonical repositories...just like every other version control system, but more complicated and confusing.