[skinnymuch]

Linux is the one that won. I don’t see how things would be much different if some BSD version or another Unix won out for server market share.

I assume disruptive means the world would be different without the product.

Similarly, Git not being around wouldn’t change much practically speaking. For all we know, Git won because of Linus. Otherwise other version control were and are similar enough. Mercurial is a prime example for the nascent time period.

OTOH, GitHub changed things. Moved from Sourceforge and in some cases, some of the mailing lists/personally hosted source codes + being part of the reason some open source stopped using some of the popular but in my opinion, kitschy and lackluster bug trackers. GitHub also inspired the copy cat Gitlab project which is now itself a unicorn worth $2B or so. Yes I know Gitlab has differentiators before and even more now. It being very heavily inspired if not lifting from GitHub for parts of it is a point of GitHub’s influence, not a critique of Gitlab.

It isn’t as certain that we would have one such dominant platform like GitHub and the new runner up and alternative of Gitlab if GitHub didn’t exist.