Git is decentralized and it works perfectly well for what it needs to do. But git isn't a system to share open source projects and get social validations from other people. Github is though, and it's excellent at that - and the network effect is there too.

Git is an area where I'm surprised a DHT system for open source hasn't yet materialized. I'm writing dockerfiles lately where I realize what I really want to do is just go 'connect to the global DHT and clobe the tree with hash (sha1 here)'

You might like this: http://blog.printf.net/articles/2015/05/29/announcing-gittor...

Really you just want the very first part, since the more complex bits are around having mutable "latest" versions and usernames.

And here's the github repo: https://github.com/cjb/gittorrent

The security model for that might be, um, interesting.

You don't want to clone a particular revision ID, you want to clone a particular branch. If it "lives" in one known place, then its home can provide access control. But if it doesn't have a home like that, then everyone needs to have consensus on what's included and what's not. And you probably don't want to have to publicize a new repo/branch/whatever ID every time your committer list changes.

> You don't want to clone a particular revision ID, you want to clone a particular branch

Actually, that's exactly what I personally want for a bunch of things. I want to grab a very specific version of an item and know that I've got the one I expected.

You have a trusted manifest and you only run what's in the manifest.