What really sets GitHub apart, is not that it uses Git, but how elegantly it pulls everything together (source control, new API discovery, networking, site hosting) around a set of core social networking ideas.

So, do you think it is possible to create something similar, but with the support for some other version control system, like mercurial? Or even a centralized one like svn? Could it even be github to offer this, despite the name?

There is a hg plugin which allows lossless communication between git and hg [1]. So in a way github already exists for mercurial, and since it already exists there is no question as to whether or not it is possible to do.

1: http://hg-git.github.com/

Mercurial has http://bitbucket.org/ -- not nearly as popular but a tad less cluttered IMHO.

Github actually offers support for svn, in a way - see http://help.github.com/svn-importing/ for a bit more info.

It is also possible to use git on top of svn - see http://www.kernel.org/pub/software/scm/git/docs/git-svn.html

I've been experimenting with bzr-git, pushing my bazaar branches to github... so far, so good (though I've not really done any 'social' stuff yet or been branching other peoples work).

CodePlex (most commonly used for .NET projects) has support for Mercurial but I don't think its social features are quite as strong as Github's.

When I moved to Portland, OR I was amazed with how social the tech community is here. Informal coding gatherings spring up regularly throughout the city, and there are two reliable "pdx hackathon" nights you can show up and hack on interesting projects with interesting people.

http://groups.google.com/group/pdx-weekly-hackathon

I haven't really looked into it; but do open source contributors not have a problem with using a closed platform to manage their products?

GitHub is closed in the sense that you can't access most of its source code but it's not really a problem since Git is decentralised. When you clone a repository from GitHub, you have everything you need to host that repository somewhere else. GitHub doesn't take any power away from the project - it only provides tools to easily manage your project.

I'm not sure that status of downloading a project's issues or wiki but I remember they were working on making them clonable.

I absolutely agree that it is not a problem.

Issues has a full api, as do most other parts for exporting/importing/manipulating data. I can't find the wiki api right offhand.

And yes, I'm ok with companies keeping some of the secrets of the sauce, as long as they're reasonable about the data, I put in, which they are.

I think the value of the community generally outweighs any concerns about them not releasing the source for it.

That said, I would love an open-source equivalent of Github. It would be fantastic for projects to be able to create an equivalent for members of their project and authors of the plugins, skins and other add-ons that surround it.

I've been using GitHub since 08 and I still think it's refreshing to continually run into developers that have recently discovered the distributed (hell, rejuvenated!) approach to collaborative software development.

Welcome.

2000, rather. Source Forge was really social at some point; I used to routinely browse the "help wanted" sections and found a few interesting projects to contribute to that way.

I also like Savannah because I am a closet GNU-cultist :-)