[devmonk]

In GitHub, that's not the case. People often fork Rails, etc. to make a change that they need locally but will push that (easily) back up to the main project for consideration. Forking allows you and others to easily work with your patched version without even having to wait on the original project. For the project owner that wants sole control of a project, GitHub might not be the right choice. But for those that want other to easily be able to make changes and provide those changes to others, GitHub is great.