Like Garth, I can never find what I’m looking for on GitHub—something about the way it is organized makes little sense to me.
I guess? I danno, it shows me a list of files, lets me view different code branches, and an gives me the URL I need to checkout the repo locally. After that, all the other stuff is just extra bells and whistles.
Even if I did understand how GitHub works, I wouldn’t use it, since it is owned by Microsoft and that alone makes me suspect of the safety of visiting the site.
I'm no fan of MS; but I don't really view them any more or less worse off than any other place I would end up putting the code. (Save maybe my own server, see below)
As I pointed out, there are some other alternatives though.
Also, it isn’t infested with (usually annoying) Javascript and HTML5 rubbish.
HTML5 in of itself is just a revision of HTML. In many ways it simplifies a lot of the weird esoteric things that used to be very browser specific. A lot of styling options were moved into CSS, which helps reduce the size of the HTML file quite a bit. In fact, arguably, HTML5 is really quite good for folks with disabilities that require screen readers, as there is considerably less crap that the reader has to parse through, and HTML5 adds more info to assist those technologies in pointing out what each section of your page is for.
JavaScript is megh, a mixed bag for me. Can be useful, but often abused. *shrug*
In my opinion, Subversion is superior to git, and is Open Source under the Apache license.
Git is open sourced as well. (All be it under the evil GNU licensing) And has about as much to do with GitHub as SVN has to do with SourceForge.
In any event, my observation was not a knock against SVN. Just that if you were previously using git (as the OP was), that they would need to switch tools to use SourceForge; if that was the route they decided to go with.
If you maintain your software on your own server and said server is running Linux or some other UNIXy OS, it may already have the tools needed to do version control.
Maybe... Many Linux distros do not install the development tools by default any longer, and in fact, I would scream bloody murder if I saw development tools on any one of my web facing servers.
The more stuff installed on a server, the more potential avenues you open up for someone to find a way in. Most of the servers I run at work don't even have ping, or telnet installed, or even a termcap file. They have the absolutely barest minimal amount of stuff to make the OS run, along with sh and related utilities for me to get in there to maintain files when something goes screwy.
Registering a domain is an inexpensive process these days and even if you have to resort to purchasing hosting space, it doesn’t amount to much money. It sure beats having your files stored on a Microsoft-controlled server.
Even if you're getting hosting from someone, you would still have to find some way of setting up the repository on that server; and would likely have to maintain that part yourself. That can be a really deep rabbit hole to fall down. It can also be a pretty steep learning curve to overcome, especially if all you want to do is get some feedback on code that you're just starting to learn how to do.
