That's already a domain name and a more complicated setup without a public static IP in home environments, and in corporate environments now you're dealing with a whole process etc. that might be easier to get through by.. paying out for github LFS.

I think it is a much bigger barrier than ssh and have seen it be one on short timeline projects where it's getting set up for the first time and they just end up paying github crazy per GB costs, or rat nests of tunnels vpn configurations for different repos to keep remote access with encryption with a whole lot more trouble than just an ssh path.

Letsencrypt was founded 2012, but become available in the wild December 2015. git-lfs mid-2014. So same era in general.