GitHub Was Never About the Source Code

With GitHub down once again, I decided to write this long-overdue blog post. This was the top comment on Hacker News when I started writing this: For a variety of reasons, we had a centralized place where everyone of a particular set of persuasions could connect, and this had outside benefits for the community as a whole. That place is becoming untenable, and with the loss of goodwill and stability, the community’s started to dissipate. […] But those emergent features like a core community and default expectation of where you can find someone will fade. And that is a very real loss for all of us. That resonates sooo much with me. GitHub has never been about the source code. It’s where I hang out with friends, see what they’ve built, and discover all the cool projects they star. It’s the only “Facebook” I still visit. There is no other place like it anymore. GitHub is on its way out, and the community around it is starting to crumble. My feed basically consists of the same two people…