> However, you're essentially taking it as a given that the absolute number of worthwhile projects has dropped thanks to GitHub.
Not just dropped -- they're drying up. I can only speak from anecdote (nobody has paid me to run a study), but while I've seen no dip in usage of my libraries, and I've seen my projects explode with half-baked forks on Github, I've seen mailing list participation and worthwhile code patch submissions drop to very nearly 0.
> What does, for example, Sourceforge get right that GitHub doesn't?
SourceForge essentially died out for modern projects upon the release of Google Code in 2006.
However, what (traditionally) SourceForge and Google Code did right -- and, what projects did in their own hosting for decades before and after that -- was place the project's community in the forefront, and the code in the background.
This meant that documentation, releases, mailing lists and other constituents of a vibrant community project were placed in the forefront, with the code being something that one worked on as part of the community.
By contrast, Github made projects secondary. The code was (originally) always attached to an individual account name. The primary project page was the code itself. Forks existed at the same namespace hierarchy as the projects they forked.
The result was that Github sucked community energy into Github itself, and in doing so, began to redefine the community social constructs in a way that allowed users to maximize social and personal rewards while minimizing work necessary to conform or participate in the project's community.
Not just dropped -- they're drying up. I can only speak from anecdote (nobody has paid me to run a study), but while I've seen no dip in usage of my libraries, and I've seen my projects explode with half-baked forks on Github, I've seen mailing list participation and worthwhile code patch submissions drop to very nearly 0.
> What does, for example, Sourceforge get right that GitHub doesn't?
SourceForge essentially died out for modern projects upon the release of Google Code in 2006.
However, what (traditionally) SourceForge and Google Code did right -- and, what projects did in their own hosting for decades before and after that -- was place the project's community in the forefront, and the code in the background.
This meant that documentation, releases, mailing lists and other constituents of a vibrant community project were placed in the forefront, with the code being something that one worked on as part of the community.
By contrast, Github made projects secondary. The code was (originally) always attached to an individual account name. The primary project page was the code itself. Forks existed at the same namespace hierarchy as the projects they forked.
The result was that Github sucked community energy into Github itself, and in doing so, began to redefine the community social constructs in a way that allowed users to maximize social and personal rewards while minimizing work necessary to conform or participate in the project's community.