> Proceeds to list but a handful of remotely meaningful repos against the hundreds of thousands on there

The trend is what's interesting here. Github has never been threatened by anyone, because their service was too good to bother for everyone but the most ideologically motivated.

Now their service has become so bad there's a github joke at work every time something is down or slower than it should.

Reputation is a very valuable thing, and Github has destroyed a stellar one in a few month, this is newsworthy.