Hey there. I'm the person that was awarded your account. GitHub has/had a form and all I did was submit a request and it was given to me. They said they deemed you as inactive for a substantial period of time. I'm not saying this is right or wrong but I thought you would take solace in knowing your old username is in good hands.
They have rules that after an account is inactive for a significant amount of time it is subject to removal.
I know this because I reclaimed a VERY inactive account. It had one repo that was forked years previously and never had any updates. And the user never contributed to any repos or anything. No activity of any type in years. So, I contacted GH support asking about the account and they removed the account and told me I could register it if I was fast.
> I know this because I reclaimed a VERY inactive account.
IIRC, activity on private repos isn't exposed on the user's page. Is it possible for a non-employee to tell the difference between a truly inactive account and one that has activity on only private repos?
And this is why I asked if the account was inactive and deletable. A staff member checked the account and confirmed that the account was inactive and deleted it so it could be reclaimed.
That being said, I would have gladly contacted the account holder but GH removed that capability a long time back. Instead I had to resort to the TOS rules that allowed inactive accounts to be removed.
That sounds like quite a story; you should consider writing it up somewhere other than an HN comment. That's a very serious issue, not least of which because GitHub uses usernames all over the place to identify people.
No notice, no communication, nothing.
When I contacted the person at GitHub who did it he refused to answer any questions or explain anything.
So watch out... If you have the same name as an employee's drinking buddy, prepare to have your account removed without notice or explanation.