Yes, your first paragraph is the big standout in my memory. GitHub and Google Code were clean, uncluttered, and focused in a way that SourceForge was very much not. Almost what Google was to Excite, Lycos, etc in the early 2000s.
Same as their reason for shutting down all their other projects. They only ever existed as a distraction for their underemployed workforce and as part of the PR that they have a mission other than pulling cash out of their personal-data-monetising advertising monopoly, forever.
