Not trying to be biased but Hg has nothing over Git,
Except ease of use maybe..? Why would people still use hg over git then..? (Except for the silly name being a turnoff?)
AFAIK it can do pull requests like the way git does but it is not better and most likely worse.
That it is 'worse' is not a problem to me.
I would even prefer git+bitbucket (or git+gc) at this point. I just don't like github as a website... What do you know, I'm a design and UX lover. I just don't think github is very 'practical' when it comes to being a collaboration tool AND a social network.
Do you know how to remove a notification from my own timeline? (you know, the one that says Nawe has forked blueprint-css, when I never did in the first place, and removed said fork anyway...)
If you can't, then it's not a social network, it's just a fucked up mess of bugs.
bitbucket has a more readable UI, has private repos (so it doesn't smell like "we'll shove openness down your throat, whether you like it or not!!!!!!!!!1"), and generally I tend to say "fuck" to things that people tell me to join ONLY because they're popular. Hey, I've got news for you: SMF doesn't get contributions from anyone else than the usual suspects. I'm sure that if SMF were to be hosted on GC or BB, it'd get the same usual suspects to register over there, and contribute just the same.
Now, GC and BB both support git so it's not even an issue with what you chose to go with...
There are so many reasons (both good and bad, both rooted or unrealistic) for which I don't like github, it'd just feel like a disaster to go with it in the end. Give me a new readable design for it, give me sequential commit numbers (we're talking about
something that's doable), give me tools to contact people (PM or email or whatever), give me tools to control my own page (like deleting entries or whatever), give me a good tutorial to make the transition from svn less painful, *AND* then I'll consider github.
Because, REALLY, "3 million repos" is the fucking worst reason to join it. Just like "It has plenty of members" was the worst possible reason to join Facebook. How many active repos/members in both of these, eh? Certainly a lot, but I'll take Google+ and Google Code anytime as better replacements, because they know something about UX design. And I don't even LIKE Google!
Plus in all honesty github is perhaps the best repository hosting option out there ATM. Google code hardly has anything like fork support or pull request
It supports forking, and pull requests can be done by opening an issue... Granted, it's not terribly functional, but to me it's more functional than the messed up fuck that is github's designer team.
Are they self-taught or what? Well, maybe someone should give them a course or something... They've improved a bit since last year, but they still suck hard. For instance, when will they stop using stupid animations for transitions between pages? It's certainly a lot of fun to them, but as a professional user I don't want animations, I want functionality. And these animations get in the way.
(Google itself doesn't use it for Android),
I don't think it'd be suitable for very large projects, either. But even with BB at least the UI makes sense to me, and doesn't try to catch me into some social crap... I haven't tested it yet (much), but from what I see, it's not as annoying.
source forge is old news,
I always hated sourceforge, the UI is better than github but it's always been so incredibly slow... Performance is the #1 factor in choosing a website.
bit bucket/repository hosting have much less features than github (AFAIK) plus a much smaller user base.
Which really, really isn't a problem with me...
I don't know why github is popular. Maybe it's the animations that won most of the userbase. Maybe they spent a lot of money trying to get everyone in the bay area to use it or something, and then it naturally spread from there. Maybe the guys who run it are absolutely charming. Or maybe it's just the better tool and I'm too old for this shit. I don't know.
What I do know, though, is that I need some pretty good reason to use github, after all the mess I've been witnessing, and "it's popular" is SO NOT a good reason for me to do that... Because popularity is the first thing you lose when you start making mistakes, and github might very well end up being replaced with a superior system. One day. And then everyone will laugh at github users for still being on that piece of crap etc etc...
Been there done that
;)