GitHub won because Git won. It was obvious by the late 00s that some DVCS was going to upend subversion (and more niche VCS like TFS). It ended up a two horse race between Git and Mercurial. GitHub bet on Git. Bitbucket bet on Mercurial.
Git took the early lead and never looked back. And GitHub's competitors were too slow to embrace Git. So GitHub dominated developer mindshare.
It seems strange now but there was a period of time during the late 00s and early 10s when developers were pretty passionate about their choice of DVCS.
Git took the early lead and never looked back. And GitHub's competitors were too slow to embrace Git. So GitHub dominated developer mindshare.
It seems strange now but there was a period of time during the late 00s and early 10s when developers were pretty passionate about their choice of DVCS.