

StackOverFlow: Why is Github more popular than Gitorious? - yarapavan
http://stackoverflow.com/questions/78991/why-is-github-more-popular-than-gitorious

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mechanical_fish
From one response:

 _Github offers hosting of closed source projects, while Gitorious is all
FOSS_

Seems like a no-brainer to me. How many people develop absolutely nothing but
open source projects that share 100% of their code from day zero? It stands to
reason that a lot of programmers don't fall into that category.

(And even if I were paid to develop nothing but open-source software, I would
occasionally want private repositories. I don't want to continuously display
100% of my prerelease code to the whole world. Looks like Gitorious has
finally started to figure this out, years late: [http://www.mail-
archive.com/gitorious@googlegroups.com/msg01...](http://www.mail-
archive.com/gitorious@googlegroups.com/msg01148.html))

And who wants to set up two Git hosts when one will do? (Even if Git _does_
make it really easy to use more than one?)

~~~
darklajid
Point taken, but I assume that those guys that want to protect their code from
the outside might want to go for a complete in-house solution as well, instead
of storing it in the cloud (I know that this is the big thing now and all, but
let's assume that I'm not the only one that likes to have local storage, local
backup and local basic/essential services).

Those can grab gitorious and set it up locally. Takes (depending on experience
with linux, rails etc) half a day for your first installation and you have the
same thing running in your office/vpn. With all your closed source precious
projects.

~~~
sant0sk1
I've tried this route and the problem is that my company wants _some_ open-
source stuff and _some_ closed source stuff. So a private Gitorious setup
isn't great because we can't put our open-source stuff there.

If self-hosted Gitorious allowed for private & public projects then I could
let it face the internet and have the perfect solution. I've seen a few
implementations of private projects with merge requests, but sadly the
Gitorious team has largely ignored them.

~~~
darklajid
Don't want to be the gitorious fanboy here. I'm using both and I'm not
involved with either project (although I kind of run an internal gitorious
instance here at work).

I have to agree with you: Both on one server is not possible. The only way to
make this work would be cumbersome:

Install a public and a private instance of gitorious. For private projects:
Works just as before. For public projects: Push to somewhere and make the
post-receive hook propagate the change to public/private.

Ugly? Hell, yes. It's nothing but a workaround.

On the other hand: You can mix GitHub and Gitorious just fine. Your client (if
you use one, or the git cli) doesn't care about the hosts, so having
<http://myPrivateGitorious> repositories next to <http://github.com>
repositories would work fine and you gain the best of both worlds. It's the
same system. You can easily push/pull/merge from one to the other, it's not
like the decision to use one or the other has to be an XOR.

------
Tawheed
I really think the answer has to do with Github's take on what a "public" view
looks like. They focus on the actual files (which is the primary use case of a
repo host) and then they focus on the README file (the WHAT), and finally
focuses on the contributors (the WHO). It's not as pretty as Gitorious, but it
is functional and clear and it gives me a clear indication of what I'm getting
out of the site and why I should care.

The ability to link to the Github 'public page' also helps make it go viral --
I never actually ended up in Github's homepage until today, I always ended up
there because of a link I followed for an open source project, and then was
upsold to sign up and set up a private repository.

On the other hand, Gitorious doesn't make it obviously easy to find the public
repositories, makes their front page look like yet another project management
site and even when you click on one of the obscure links for a public repo,
you're shown a bunch of Activity feeds which doesn't mean anything to the
typical visitor.

I think the hardest thing to do with WebApps is to show the user what a
"humming" version of the app looks like, how a productive user of the site can
use the WebApp. Github does this excellently while Gitorious does not.

------
samd
Does anyone else notice how all the top ranked answers address the technical
differences between GitHub and Gitorious? GitHub certainly has a great
product, but that is not a sufficient condition for being popular (it may not
even be necessary). I don't know how GitHub got a head start, but the answer
to their continuing success is the network effect.

~~~
Tawheed
Just goes to show how there will almost always be different communities online
with differing levels of focus.

StackOverflow's community clearly values the intricacies of tech.

If this conversation was happening in a LinkedIn group, I can imagine many
more discussions on distribution models, market size, or even strategic
partnerships.

HN has the unique blend of tech+business providing unique insights and answers
that takes a lot of these different factors into consideration.

------
d0m
There's also more book that talk about github.. or the book that I have
actually read talk about github and not other services. Also, in the same
idea, github has a better marketing visibility.

~~~
markkanof
Agreed. Other responses here explain some of the original popularity of
github. At this point though I also think github has a huge amount of
momentum. I had not heard of gitorious until reading this post (granted I use
mercurial, not git), but I see references to github everywhere.

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pellicle
Gitorious needs a "documentation" link on its front page leading to at least
"overview" and "getting started" docs.

Also, as an aside, Gitorious should consider switching to a new logo, or none
at all, and then choose a lighter colorscheme for the site. The current theme
reminds me of a hospital room at night.

Seriously; if you ask around and find that people really can't seem to come up
with a good reason why they use Github instead of Gitorious, this is why.

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metachris
Sidenote: that thread is more than one year old (mid 2009)

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vsthesquares
Path dependence matters.

