[xte]

Yes, git, however host a repo for anyone it's another story. In the past most FOSS projects was mirrored by tons of different participants, mostly universities, ISPs, companies with reasonable resource and being part of the project itself they can be considered friendly.

now with GitHub&c excluding Savannah the sole friendly option is buy a domain, a VPS and host there the project...

That's the problem, not technical but "political" to a certain extent.

In the past someone try GitTorrent to solve this problem a bit (opening the door for "personal hosting at home" but it's a dead project now ad it was never completed. Mostly because newcomers think GitHub&c as a free space by nature, something guarantee to work always and been always free without any other "occult" cost.