Yes! There are alternatives to Github, people! Diversify! Switch to Sourcehut or Gitea or Gitlab or even DIY with Gitolite. git is a decentralized peer-to-peer system, we shouldn't let Microsoft have a monopoly on its use.
> Just adding variety reduces the chance of having all the important repos up at the same time.
this, sadly, is correct, and the solution you propose is also correct.
The only other option would be for the NixOS Foundation to mirror the git repo of _every single important package_, and I know they're already struggling with the prohibitive cloud costs of hosting just the build objects. :/
I think this attitude really underrates the network effects of GitHub.
I personally am okay making an account on another forge to submit a bug report or patch, but most people aren't. And so I keep my repos on GitHub.
I do plan to soon set up mirroring to another service though. I haven't found a great zero-effort solution to mirror repos from an entire organization though, including ones that are created after mirroring was initially set up. Do you know of any tools which have that functionality? (If not I might write my own at some point.)
Just adding variety reduces the chance of having all the important repos up at the same time.