An open letter of gratitude to GitHub

What I do frequently see with Github, is that they've managed to work their way into almost being beyond reproach. This letter feels like an example of that...Almost like Github needs someone to stand up for it in light of some meanies picking on it.

It's a good product. We should give credit where credit is due, just don't forget it's a product. A (by all indications), very profitable product that wants to make money off you. That is its goal and purpose in life, and OSS furthers it. For the record, I think this is a good and healthy relationship, but we shouldn't pretend it's some FOSS group or non-profit out struggling to provide us with Git hosting.

Then, a handful of guys took the challenge to build an awesome platform and as a consequence of their hard work, their platform earned its hegemony.

Two things stand out in this "thank you Github" open letter:

1. While the situation improved tremendously in certain areas the way to participate in Open Source is still very much fragmented. Most of the major open source projects (like Linux, Mozilla, Apache and nginx, to name a few) still have their own workflows, patches are still circulated in emails and issues are still being reported in a myriad ways. Despite of the big visibility GitHub has among the new open source projects we are very far from not being fragmented.

2. Before 2007 we had, for instance, SourceForge that back then had also earned its hegemony and, for a series of reasons (one of them being too late to answer to the community wants and needs) lost its way, its hegemony and its user base.

There is time for praise and time for hard work and, IMO, the "Dear Github" open letter is a constructive way to call attention to the perceived problems while the 'Dear "Dear Github"' and this gratitude letter are dismissive to their concerns (the former) and mostly empty praise and adulation (the later).