I stated using git a year or more ago and then began using github not long after. One of the advantages is using github to hold my "stuff" and then easily deploy to my AWS instances with clone/pulls. If you are not familiar with some of the rationale behind git in general you should watch the Youtube video of Linus Torvalds giving a talk on git at Google in 2007. It can encourage developers to commit more frequently because it is a distributed repository so their commits are not seen by others until they are ready. Some developers do not commit their changes regularly because they do not like the feeling that they are being judged by them. As a result they run the risk of loss as well as not having history to back out changes. For whatever reason Github has overtaken Sourceforge as the repository of choice. It would be interesting to do a comparison of their evolution from their inceptions to determine the reasons for the shift. I also decided to start using a Github micro account (monthly charge) so that I can have private repositories. This seems to make the most sense for some of the AWS scripts that I use to monitor instances for now.