I like to browse a codebase in some way that I don’t have to download and unzip an unknown set of files.
Indeed.
Although providing a browsable source tree is convenient, we shouldn't default that on Microsoft's private platform (which, after all, monetizes the code stored there by using it for LLM training).
If a project is free software or open source, Codeberg.org is an excellent solution, while there exists a whole host of other web git hosts as well.
Let's take advantage of the field's diversity, lest it narrows down on us abruptly.
It means you can get the code if you want it. If you have to pay for postage so someone can send you a floppy with the source code, it's still open source. It's open to you.
> The "source code" for a work means the preferred form of the work for making modifications to it.
Certainly, in the past "a tarball of the source for whatever version you have" was absolutely considered sufficient for that. But these days the features provided by source control systems, such as "annotate"(/"blame"), "bisect", etc... could very well be argued to have raised the baseline for what "the preferred form of the work for making modifications to it" should mean.