How I’d Change GitHub

Having entered the software engineering world in the “age of GitHub,” I really appreciate learning more about the practical ways in which the advent and growth of GitHub have made community and discovery more difficult.

I often read about nostalgia for the days of mailing lists and IRC but have struggled to understand the appeal since I never experienced those forms communication myself. This analysis really opened a window into that world for me, and I now find myself in agreement with Michael that GitHub has not made discoverability and community engagement a priority.

GitHub has the ability to restore the soul of open source and make things much more exciting for 100,000 projects out there without an audience. It should do everything in it’s power to cultivate that excitement for everyone, not just a few lucky people.

I agree wholeheartedly and would love to see GitHub take steps in this direction.

> as everyone these days associates it with Open Source development

Seen many weird uses of Github. Some use it as a sort of public Dropbox, others do nothing but blogging. Others just have a repo with a single README that contains curated link dumps. There's so much more besides open source as a use-case, albeit link dumps and blogs would still constitute open source, just they're not 'software' in the typical sense.