You believe that Github is some kind of heritage organisation? Incentives are aligned now, kind of, except they train an AI that they sell to other people on your code. I use Github but do it with open eyes.

GitHub has Arctic Code Vault program.

Just looked it up. That is impressive. Probably could do with some Antarctic geo redundancy ;-).

Software Heritage are also archiving all of GitHub (and more):

https://www.softwareheritage.org/

Add $1000 to your Namecheap accounts, turn autorenew ON, you are good for couple decades ...

So we'll trust Namecheap for a couple decades but not a Microsoft-backed purpose-built website?

The question of "how long would a non-famous repository stay alive on github" is actually an interesting thought experiment.

GitHub's track record on this so far is fantastic. Repos that were created 15 years ago and didn't see another commit since their creation are still there today.

By this metric, folks should go for sourceforge: https://sourceforge.net/p/gnome-napster/code/ has last seen activity 23 years ago, while https://sourceforge.net/p/primal/code/ci/master/tree/ saw changes this year.

> Last Update: 2013-02-19

Am I missing something? Where did you get 23 years from?

Latest commit in CVS. I'm not sure what the Last Update date is about, but I think Sourceforge did some larger data shuffle in 2013, at least there are many orphaned projects where the site claims an update in 2013 even though nothing of the sort happened.

I see, thanks for clearing that up!

They are living four decades from now in 2040.

What is the actual downside to hosting it personally and hosting it on github or something like it?

Downside is GitHub or any of the commercial git-hosting sites might use your code in ways you didn't intend e.g. machine learning, training neural nets, etc. Alternatively they might go out of business and go down after hinting you to save a local copy. These are countered by self-hosting your repo in your own (home/cloud) server.

Downside of self-hosting is time, money and effort. You've to spend for energy and hardware and your time and effort to keep them shipshape. Chances of it surviving beyond you are slim.

Both has downsides; just pick one depending on what kind of person you're. If you only want to write code vs that and also know how to maintain it. The latter is necessary skill if you ask me, instead of being just a code monkey.

Well I was called "brainwashed" for suggesting it without any explanation so good luck getting a coherent answer ;-)