Caroline

GitHub not only provides a centralized service for automated patch creation and merging, bug and feature tracking via tagged threads, and organizational permission management (which are the main draw)…

It also provides:

• A free* and robust CI automation service that integrates smoothly with the aforementioned patch creation, merging, and feature tracking
  • Within reasonable limits. I’ve never had an issue with the limits set for free users, even with constant testing on large projects.
• A helpful combination of kanban (board), table, and timeline trackers for the aforementioned tagged threads, or simpler ideas
• A host for static websites that can be redirected to your own registered domain, completely free of charge
• Social features that help users find new projects to contribute to and keep up-to-date on projects they already use and contribute to

GitHub may seem simple, but it really provides a ton of functionality to power-users and organization managers that cannot afford to foot the bill themselves. People like me could not continue to do what we do without GitHub at this point in time.

GitHub would have to become unusable to me for me to switch. I already oppose a great many things GitHub does, but I consistently use most if not all of the free features on the platform, and their Git LFS for cloud storage (of all things. I know. I’m still kicking myself for that blunder).

The least problematic thing would be moving my snippets from GitHub Gist to a basic repository on some other site.

All of the projects I’ve ever created are on GitHub. Over 100 in total, not counting the projects in organizations I started. If I could find a trustworthy, reliable host for Git, I could potentially migrate those repositories over many hours of work, but then I would run into the problem of CI testing and automation being inaccessible from the new host. I use GitHub Actions for a lot of projects, and I’ve never liked other CI providers.

My organizations are all customized with specific teams for specific projects, and all of that would have to be replicated on the new host. My teammates would also have to switch for me to feel comfortable there as well, but in the case that GitHub becomes unusable, I wouldn’t have any choice but to leave them for whatever host I chose. I’d have to find a new place to put my kanban and table trackers that are currently managed through the excellent GitHub Projects as well.

My static website is deployed using GitHub Actions to GitHub Pages and redirected to my domain through CloudFlare (which I also oppose for their anti-LGBT “family” filter, but like GitHub, I don’t see a good free alternative).

TL;DR: It would have to be a perfect storm, or a complete disaster to make me switch providers for all these services.