Ask HN: Do teams really need to use GitHub?

Enterprises can self-host, sure. Open source projects uses it for the the network effects of GitHub. But why does a small software team need to use GitHub?

I understand the ecosystem argument. Once you've got your repos, CI/CD, PRs, code reviews, packages, integrations, etc. all wired into GitHub, moving everything is a pain. But Git itself is distributed, and GitHub has a pretty open plugin/integration system. There are also perfectly capable alternatives like GitLab, Bitbucket, Forgejo, Gitea, SourceHut, etc.

So what is the actual thing that makes a 10–20 person software company stick with GitHub? Is it mostly switching costs? The ecosystem? Developer familiarity? Something else? And if you were to start a project today, would you still go with GitHub?

And a slightly more personal question.

I've had a rough idea for what a new GitHub could look like if it were built specifically for software that is increasingly being written by AI agents, and specifically for companies rather than open-source projects. The idea isn't really "another GitHub clone". More of a forge designed around how software teams might work when agents are doing a significant part of the coding, reviewing, testing and deployment work, etc.

I've been sitting on the idea for a while because, well, GitHub exists. But after the recent outages, I've started wondering whether this is actually worth pursuing. In fact, I see a future where there are multiple alternatives to GitHub with their own take on the interface and UI/UX. Interested to hear your thoughts.