Earlier quoted context omitted.
How is this even a failure? Google Code was the best at what it did for several years. Now it's not. That doesn't eradicate the time in the past where it provided real value to millions of users. A party isn't a failure just because everyone eventually has to go home. It just means even successful things have ends.
> How is this even a failure? Google Code was the best at what it did for several years. Google Code had a few good years, and I am grateful that it happened. However, it did fail to win the software forge battle as the space heated up. It failed to evolve enough to keep up. It failed to keep the mindshare it built in those two initial years as Github and others blew past it over the next six. So call it for what it…
This is just the wrong metaphor entirely. It's not a battle because battles, and even wars, have ends.
But you're implying that somehow today is special and marks the end of the battle and therefore GitHub "won" because it's the most popular right now. But will it be in twenty years? If not, will you have to go back and edit your comment?
There's no winning and losing here. It's just an endless continuum of time where popularity waxes and wanes, where things end and new things begin. Google Code had a good run. So did SourceForge before it, and CVS and FTP sites before that. Something will come along to replace GitHub eventually.
The computer world is new enough that we haven't gotten used to the idea of software technology having a finite lifespan, but it absolutely does. That's OK. The goal of every product on Earth doesn't have to be to live forever.