Sure. When GitHub is online, the argument holds fine as well. I fail to see what difference that makes. Clearly the situation being described is when the submodules aren't init'd and GitHub is down (e.g., bringing up a new server and deploying with Capistrano).

I think he's also referring to website hosting, issues, wiki, etc.

Sure, there is, but then why do I pay for GitHub? And I was mostly alluding to pull requests, issues, pages, etc. All the non-git stuff that I rely on being available as well.

Your statement was "If only there was some way of using git locally without needing github". Stick to it and save the theatrics. Git is a software package that you can download and use, yes Virginia, "locally". As to the availability of a remote host serving a precious resource not being available, well Virginia, those are just the facts of networking life.

It's actually quite likely. If you have a git repo listed in a Gemfile, for example, and you need to bring up a new server or deploy, you're going to have problems. Sure, the outage isn't going to last forever. But the standard, snarky reply about git working fine locally is really tiresome.