It's a lot more than just a reliable offsite -- it invented collaboration features that didn't exist in pure Git. Github's pull request and code review workflow has become pervasive in the industry.
It's also not sustained by VC cash anymore -- Microsoft is buying the company.
Sure the collaboration features are also valuable. It also isn't obvious that they require centralization. One could argue that only a centralizing organization could extract the rents that could underwrite developing those features, but such an argument only goes so far.
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It's a lot more than just a reliable offsite -- it invented collaboration features that didn't exist in pure Git. Github's pull request and code review workflow has become pervasive in the industry.
It's also not sustained by VC cash anymore -- Microsoft is buying the company.
Sure the collaboration features are also valuable. It also isn't obvious that they require centralization. One could argue that only a centralizing organization could extract the rents that could underwrite developing those features, but such an argument only goes so far.