The RIAA, GitHub, and youtube-dl

Is the problem a centralized repository (given how easy it is to recover using local copies) or other infrmation such as pull requests and bugs?

The problem the blockchain solves is essentially distributed agreement on transactions with resistance to tampering *in the context of ongoing distributed agreement*, ie, further transactions and modifications from anywhere. I don’t think the security problems it solves are really of concern for a code repository - there’s a single authoritative version from somewhere, presumably, and a limited number of folks who can change it. Just sign or encrypt the thing being distributed.

In fact, if you don’t need to solve those specific security problems, blockchain is a shit way of distributing stuff - it has *massive* overhead vs a distributed protocol without “proof of work” (or proof of whatever you’d like). If your fundamental goal is to get *data* around in a trusted manner - rather than do distributed agreement type things - blockchain is not a good answer.

We know how to build distributed services, I think the problem is practicality and combining distributed service with ease of finding things and all the other stuff - as you mentioned - that a system like GitHub provides.

Yeah, if only there were some blockchain-based DVCS created as a response to gatekeepers using legal threats to shut down the collaboration tools of a well-known project…