Cocoapods uses GitHub. No abuse here.
Using a GitHub repo as a high traffic code CDN and keeping 5+ cores pegged while being the single biggest consumer of resources across the whole platform could be reasonably defined as an abuse of the service.
Primary definitions on Google:
"abuse" verb: use (something) to bad effect
"abuse" noun: the improper use of something
It's abuse. Wasn't intentional, but at the scale that Cocoapods is running it's abuse.
Discounting the fact that CocoaPods is used by millions of iOS developers...
If CocoaPod was run by a business that was charging those millions of developers for their services, it would be reasonable to expect that business to pay for a real CDN.
They're not, so that's not a reasonable expectation. But it's no more reasonable to make these demands of GitHub. Giving out a free product doesn't mean that you're required to give it out unconditionally, or in unlimited amounts, or forever. In the end, GitHub owns the infrastructure and services it's providing and can do what it wants with it.
Just about every other package manager for every other language (Pip, CPAN, Hackage, etc.) uses its own infrastructure.
I've run tor exit nodes and repo hosting when I worked for ISPs and Datacenters while at the same time shuting customers down who do the same. The difference being that I had that conversation with my boss and said, 'this will violate our normal terms of service but I would like to do this.' The boss is of course more willing to make that concession when he can walk down the hall and say, 'uh, we have extremely high usage and today, can you shut down the repos until we can get another link installed?'
