Is making a round wheel copying inventor of the round wheel, or is it just using what we know, through trial, error, and customer and market feedback, works best? Or, to bring it up to the Internet age, take the Amazon.com checkout process. It is, arguably, the "best." (NOTE: I'm not going to take up space defining "best," but to try to nip the troll in the bud, I'm talking about "best" as Amazon, the world's largest Internet retailer, defines it, which is in ways it can and does test, measure, and optimize.)
The current state of the Amazon shopping cart and checkout experience is the result of billions of tests (transactions) over the past 18 years of its existence. In fact, we can think of Amazon as a giant "shopping cart testing and optimization machine" that displays its findings for all to see. To not use and benefit from those results is, let me try to find a word other than the "s" worD, maybe not a great idea.
My point is that Github is the market leader in what it does and to not identify and benefit from its best parts is maybe not a great idea. I would expect a strong competitor to GitHub to be strongly inspired by it. Obviously, they cannot (or at least should not) copy things that would infringe on GitHub's copyrights and trademarks, and not its color scheme, typography, and copywriting, but I would expect features and workflows to be very similar, sometimes even identical, to GitHub's. Microsoft Office vs. LibreOffice is an example that comes to mind. Don't reinvent the wheel. Use the knowledge and test results that you have available. Swim downstream, not up.
The current state of the Amazon shopping cart and checkout experience is the result of billions of tests (transactions) over the past 18 years of its existence. In fact, we can think of Amazon as a giant "shopping cart testing and optimization machine" that displays its findings for all to see. To not use and benefit from those results is, let me try to find a word other than the "s" worD, maybe not a great idea.
My point is that Github is the market leader in what it does and to not identify and benefit from its best parts is maybe not a great idea. I would expect a strong competitor to GitHub to be strongly inspired by it. Obviously, they cannot (or at least should not) copy things that would infringe on GitHub's copyrights and trademarks, and not its color scheme, typography, and copywriting, but I would expect features and workflows to be very similar, sometimes even identical, to GitHub's. Microsoft Office vs. LibreOffice is an example that comes to mind. Don't reinvent the wheel. Use the knowledge and test results that you have available. Swim downstream, not up.
Just my two cents :)