The debs on the Elasticsearch site are links to Github downloads: http://www.elasticsearch.org/download/2012/12/07/0.20.1.html links to https://github.com/downloads/elasticsearch/elasticsearch/ela.... If you don't have a reflex to check the destination of a link to a binary you might not notice it that much, but I see a decent number of projects hosting their release builds on github. It's certainly common for APKs as was pointed out above, but I've seen it for Adium plugins, debs & rpms, even full apps - if memory serves the precompiled SSHuttle gui for OS X was hosted on github as well as the code.

Which link to github downloads? :)

http://www.elasticsearch.org/download/2012/12/07/0.20.1.html

These:

  <h2 class="download_link">
  0.20.1: <a href="https://github.com/downloads/elasticsearch/elasticsearch/elasticsearch-0.20.1.zip">zip</a>
  / <a href="https://github.com/downloads/elasticsearch/elasticsearch/elasticsearch-0.20.1.tar.gz">tar.gz</a>
  / <a href="https://github.com/downloads/elasticsearch/elasticsearch/elasticsearch-0.20.1.deb">deb</a>
  / <a href="https://github.com/elasticsearch/elasticsearch/issues?labels=v0.20.1&amp;sort=created&amp;direction=desc&amp;state=closed&amp;page=1">issues</a>
  </h2>

Plugins are managed (quite nicely) via GitHub downloads. This includes official and third-party plugins. The official plugins can migrate elsewhere, but it will be difficult for the third-party plugins.

http://www.elasticsearch.org/guide/reference/modules/plugins...

"The ability to install plugins from github allows to easily install site plugins hosted there"