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This is not about how hard or easy it is to move from GitHub. What scares me is that it is increasingly hard to participate in the open source/free software community without using GitHub, and it is increasingly hard to find contributors for your own project if you are not willing to host it there.

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Why is it scary to use Github? Is there some hidden cost that people aren't aware of?

The programming community became globally dependent on a single commercial company. Using GitHub would mean contributing to that dependence and monopolization even more.

Is anyone really dependent when the cost to switch to a different provider is low? You haven't given a good reason.

It's not just about moving data from one provider to another. GitHub is not simply a hosting service, it's a large centralized social network, and the cost of switching from it includes reduced project visibility and disconnection from the community.

These may be issues for smaller projects, but I don't feel that either visibility or community is a problem for a project like Python. They have the luxury of going wherever they want and people will follow.

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