[010101010101]

Your apparent problems with Git the source control system aren’t what any of this is talking about, this is about GitHub as a platform. SourceForge is your better “pre-git” analogue here, and it, like SVN, still exists and is actively maintained and used.

[thataccount]

I am aware of what this article is talking about in terms of platforms. Sourceforge might be a better analogy. What I was saying is that development of other source control like Subversion halted as Git entered the scene. Git was first version control, subsequently a platform.

[tombert]

But Git isn't the platform. It's still just a version control.

The article itself is explaining other platforms that work with Git, of which there are dozens. The `git` program itself isn't even developed on Github; it's developed on the kernel.org site [1]. Git != Github.

There's still development for SVN, Perforce still has plenty of paying customers, and Epic games themselves released a new version control a few weeks ago [2], so it's not like everyone assumes that version control is a "solved" problem. I'm honestly not sure what your point is.

[1] https://git.kernel.org/

[2] https://lore.org/

[thataccount]

Here is a simple question to highlight my point. Do you think Github would exist had Git not first existed?

I know SVN is still developed, but it is no longer really treated as a solution. That is why we are talking about Git and not Subversion.

[tombert]

Well, it certainly wouldn't be called Github, but I'm sure there would be some equivalent "MercurialHub" or "MonotoneHub" had Git not been created.

Even before Git, there was Bitkeeper (which in some ways was arguably better), and that was what they used for the kernel until some drama with Larry McVoy happened. If there wasn't that drama, I think some kind of BitkeeperHub might have eventually happened.

Yes, Git overtook it, but I still don't really understand your point; it's not about Git, it's about a centralized forge.

[thataccount]

>Yes, Git overtook it, but I still don't really understand your point; it's not about Git, it's about a centralized forge.

What you aren't understanding is that all software development proceeds first by an underlying philosophy that evolves into other solutions inspired by the software that came before it. Git inspired the way Github works. You are trying to separate the two into distinct entities when they are really a flowing into one another.

[tombert]

Sure, but GitHub sort of runs contrary to what Git's philosophy, which is why I'm arguing that "Git" is an irrelevant variable with regards to the problems with Github.

Git, as a software version control platform, is supposed to be decentralized. It's designed to mimic the way that kernel development was done, with a lot of separate repos and email being used to merge in diff files.

If anything, Github really brings the subversion model to Git; Git primarily just has categorically better merging than SVN.