GitHub is making me lazy but I like it

So, I'm not a huge GitHub fan for open source projects. Why? Because while it's a great site and tool (don't get me wrong, I can understand the attraction), GitHub can be a pain in the ass for end users. How so? I don't know how many times I've found some code I wanted to use only to find a dozen or more forks, none of which have been merged back together and a handful of which have patches I'm interested in. It's way, way too easy in GitHub for the community to get <i>lost</i> in the forks. There's no clear mechanism for communication (mailing list, forums, etc.) and not enough pressure to merge code back into a common repository. Sure it democratizes contributions, but it also makes a mess.<p>There's a real need and advantage to having a canonical, master repository - something users can trust that's been properly vetted, tested and debugged. There's a lot of value in a single place for discussion with public, searchable archives so that users can learn the project history, why decisions were made and, if necessary, ask new questions. There's nothing worse than having to use Google to search blogs for outdated documentation and discussions split across little more than tweets.<p>GitHub encourages <i>forking</i> but it doesn't necessarily encourage <i>merging</i>. Successful open source projects which a large, invested user base require a bit more structure, stability and developer support than GitHub encourages. It may be a great place to start a project, but at some point, I can see projects graduating to their own infrastructure and a real, organized community.

Its pretty much identical reasons to why CPAN also became such a success. CPAN's infrastructure and tools is what made the telling difference and Github seems to be heading on a similar tract.

I do worry about GitHub on some levels. I'm an avid user and I love it --- but there's the part of me that's really worried about it being the only real option for hosting. Would the community leave GitHub if their policies changed and it was less of an awesome place to work with your code, or would we feel trapped because it's still what everyone uses?

If only GitHub could solve OSS politics too. :) This 6 year old ticket asking for better logging support in Twisted is just scary: <a href="http://twistedmatrix.com/trac/ticket/638" rel="nofollow">http://twistedmatrix.com/trac/ticket/638</a>

I actually wasn't involved in much open source in the past but I've been contributing something nearly every day for the past couple of months because of GitHub.<p>Another great contribution from GitHub is the way it's founders help push better standards for coding: TomDoc, Semanic Versioning, etc.

It's called progress, mate.