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Github is a distributed system, with a unifying front-end. The DDoS just ends up targeting all of it.

How do you propose to stop that with your proposal?

But if two systems are identical, wouldn't it be likely that both would break at the same time?

No. Unless you do something dumb like "don't test that the failover system is fully functional before taking the primary offline;" this applies to any maintenance, which also includes upgrades. Usual HA tactics apply - don't rely on one power source, one network link, or just about any SPOF. (Which means that requirements start breeding like rabbits, which gets expensive rather quickly - whereas Github is free-as-in-beer, which is good enough for most people)

Perhaps the only case breaking both at once would be deliberate action (DDoS etc.).

> You know, git is a distributed system, unlike github.

Thanks for the snark. I know git is a distributed system. My question was about everything else being down (your issue tracker, CI server, wiki/documentation), not about git itself.