The comment I responded to said anyone who has problems with GitHub always has a local copy of the repo. I'm participating in a discussion about the problems with GitHub in the abstract. I'm not trying to change the minds of the Python community, and I'm not even complaining about their choice. Nothing I wrote past the opening sentence was specific to this particular decision or community, and I have no dog in the fight either way. That was the entire point of prefacing my comment with that disclaimer.

Why has the level of discussion on HN turned to such a nasty one lately?

> their end-user in this model is [...] the core developer who is going to have a (hopefully) easier time reviewing changes

The point is, anyone who decides to go the GitHub-only route is going to have a worse time reviewing changes of those who choose to stay away from GitHub for similar reasons for choosing to stay away from something like Facebook—because those contributors either won't embark on making those changes to begin with, or will be unable to send them in after the fact.