Devil's advocate:
Considering GitHub popularized git, if I were in charge of git I'd listen to what the GitHub guys have to say about it.
Considering GitHub popularized git, if I were in charge of git I'd listen to what the GitHub guys have to say about it.
Linus using git for the linux kernel, the bitkeeper drama, and doing talks about why git is better and everything is broken made git popular.
Github has done a lot to push it, but even without github, git would still be huge.
When git was announced, I got it and played around with it for a bit, but I went back to svn, it was only with all the OSS that I cared about working with (rails gems anyone?) or on that I started caring about git in a serious way. I'm only one datapoint though.
Linus' use case for a pull request would probably be to much for a popularized and casual use case that is likely typical for GitHub.
And anyway it's Linus' prerogative to dictate his requirements for contributing to his project. The description he gives doesn't make it seem overly difficult (use what's already built-in).
Github wouldn't exist without Linus' git. I am really surprised they didn't take Linus' advice (reasonable, and no difficulty at all) in the first place.