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Don't get caught up on GitHub specifically. GitHub is just the most popular example of how projects don't need Apache to host them anymore, yet Apache still expects to do so, and worse, expects to assert a lot of restriction over it.

The point is, that is at odds with what the community wants and needs. As the author pointed out, ten years ago, rolling your own SCM hosting was a big pain. Now, it's not, partly because of GitHub and Bitbucket and others, but also because rolling your own isn't as hard either.

Anyone with minimal server admin experience and knowledge of Git can run their own Git server on a VPS with something like Gitolite. I know because I succeeded in doing so myself, and I'm neither a pro server admin, nor did I have any Git experience at the time I did the initial setup of Gitolite. Prior to that, I had set up a Mercurial server with no prior Mercurial experience either. It's pretty easy now.

So, yeah, GitHub is there, but GitHub could disappear tomorrow and the community still wouldn't need to turn to Apache for project hosting. In that respect, they're still solving a problem nobody has anymore, and that was the point the author was making.



GitHub isn't a new version of Apache - GitHub is a new version of SourceForge. I don't think that even 10 years ago anyone with a line (or 100 lines) of code can set up their own Apache projects.

10 years ago if you needed free SCM, you'd use SourceForge, not Apache. I don't think it would've been that big of a pain even then.

GitHub projects don't necessarily come with its own community with diverse contributors, whereas Apache projects require it.


In that respect, they're still solving a problem nobody has anymore, and that was the point the author was making.

That wasn't the author's point at all.




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