A byproduct was the naming/addressing of projects was built around a person (or company), then the project - usera/project1. Anyone else could take/fork their own project1 - userb/project1, userc/project1, etc. Interested in project1? You could look at various versions/forks of it through the perspective of different users, because the user was first, not the project.
EDIT: further... github really put the control back to individuals. anyone could start anything, vs trying to get ideas committed in to a project. Some of this is the nature of distributed vs centralized, but github still made it convenient to just get ideas out there. Setting up a repo takes a few seconds - my memory was sourceforge took a lot longer - wasn't there some review process where you'd submit your project then it was approved for your use?