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Looking at the corrected graph in Michael's answer, showing both git-core and git on Debian systems, the question seems to be why git started to become popular in 2006 on Debian systems and why it grew exponentially between 2006-2012.

The reason could be the strong adoption of Debian-based Linux distributions, like Ubuntu, which started to become popular around 2005-2006 and became the #1 distro up until around 2011, when Mint, also Debian-based, became #1. In the end of 2012, Mint is still #1 and Ubuntu #3 according to DistroWatch.

GitHub, founded in 2008, provided free git hosting, and between 2008 and 2012 became the #1 source repository service in the world with ~2.5 million users and ~4.5 million projects, according to Wikipedia in late 2012.

Rails and many other projects switched from Rubyforge to GitHub in the late 2000s. In addition, Bundler was introduced around the time originally in question (late 2009) with support for installing/updating gems via a :git option in the Gemfile, and Bundler was included as a dependency of Rails 3. Projects in Python, Javascript, C, C++, Java, CSS, etc. also migrated to or started on GitHub.

Those that wanted to contribute to the projects on GitHub needed to fork the project in GitHub, use a local git client to clone the repository before making amendments and pushing them back into GitHub and doing a pull request. This was much simpler than other methods used before and arguably was a significant reason that it was adopted by the projects that moved to GitHub or decided to start there. This meant git-core/git needed to be installed in the Debian-based distros so that developers could use GitHub.

So, I believe that it was a combination of Debian-based distros becoming more popular and growing git adoption because of GitHub's growth in users and projects, which likely stems from GitHub's free hosting and user experience.

Looking at the corrected graph in Michael's answer, showing both git-core and git on Debian systems, the question seems to be why git started to become popular in 2006 on Debian systems and why it grew exponentially between 2006-2012.

The reason could be the strong adoption of Debian-based Linux distributions, like Ubuntu, which started to become popular around 2005-2006 and became the #1 distro up until around 2011, when Mint, also Debian-based, became #1. In the end of 2012, Mint is still #1 and Ubuntu #3 according to DistroWatch.

GitHub, founded in 2008, provided free git hosting, and between 2008 and 2012 became the #1 source repository service in the world with ~2.5 million users and ~4.5 million projects, according to Wikipedia in late 2012.

Rails and many other projects switched from Rubyforge to GitHub in the late 2000s. In addition, Bundler was introduced around the time originally in question (late 2009) with support for installing/updating gems via a :git option in the Gemfile, and Bundler was included as a dependency of Rails 3. Projects in Python, Javascript, C, C++, Java, CSS, etc. also migrated to or started on GitHub.

Those that wanted to contribute to the projects on GitHub needed to fork the project in GitHub, use a local git client to clone the repository before making amendments and pushing them back into GitHub and doing a pull request. This was much simpler than other methods used before and arguably was a significant reason that it was adopted by the projects that moved to GitHub or decided to start there. This meant git-core/git needed to be installed in the Debian-based distros so that developers could use GitHub.

So, I believe that it was a combination of Debian-based distros becoming more popular and growing git adoption because of GitHub's growth in users and projects, which likely stems from GitHub's free hosting and user experience.

Looking at the corrected graph in Michael's answer, showing both git-core and git on Debian systems, the question seems to be why git started to become popular in 2006 on Debian systems and why it exponentially grew between 2006-2012.

The reason could be the strong adoption of Debian-based linux distributions, like Ubuntu which started to become popular around 2005-2006 and became the #1 distro up until around 2011 when Mint, also Debian, became #1. Today in the end of 2012, Mint is still #1 and Ubuntu #3 according to DistroWatch.

GitHub, founded in 2008, provided free git hosting and between 2008 and 2012 has become the #1 source repository service in the world with ~2.5 million users and ~4.5 million projects according to Wikipedia in late 2012.

For those into Ruby on Rails, Rails and many other projects switched from Rubyforge to GitHub in the late 2000s. In addition, Bundler was introduced around the time originally in question (late 2009) with support for installing/updating gems via a :git option in the Gemfile, and Bundler was included as a dependency of Rails 3.

  Projects in Python, Javascript, C, C++, Java, CSS, etc. were also coming to GitHub.

Those that wanted to contribute to the projects on GitHub needed to fork the project in GitHub, use a local git client to clone the repository before making amendments and pushing them back into GitHub and doing a pull request. This was much simpler than other methods used before and arguably was a significant reason that it was adopted by the projects that moved to GitHub or decided to start there.

So, I think the answer is that it is a combination of adoption of Debian-based distros, along with GitHub usage, and git adoption in frameworks themselves (perhaps due to GitHub's ease of use).

Looking at the corrected graph in Michael's answer, showing both git-core and git on Debian systems, the question seems to be why git started to become popular in 2006 on Debian systems and why it grew exponentially between 2006-2012.

The reason could be the strong adoption of Debian-based Linux distributions, like Ubuntu, which started to become popular around 2005-2006 and became the #1 distro up until around 2011, when Mint, also Debian-based, became #1. In the end of 2012, Mint is still #1 and Ubuntu #3 according to DistroWatch.

GitHub, founded in 2008, provided free git hosting, and between 2008 and 2012 became the #1 source repository service in the world with ~2.5 million users and ~4.5 million projects, according to Wikipedia in late 2012.

Rails and many other projects switched from Rubyforge to GitHub in the late 2000s. In addition, Bundler was introduced around the time originally in question (late 2009) with support for installing/updating gems via a :git option in the Gemfile, and Bundler was included as a dependency of Rails 3. Projects in Python, Javascript, C, C++, Java, CSS, etc. also migrated to or started on GitHub.

Those that wanted to contribute to the projects on GitHub needed to fork the project in GitHub, use a local git client to clone the repository before making amendments and pushing them back into GitHub and doing a pull request. This was much simpler than other methods used before and arguably was a significant reason that it was adopted by the projects that moved to GitHub or decided to start there. This meant git-core/git needed to be installed in the Debian-based distros so that developers could use GitHub.

So, I believe that it was a combination of Debian-based distros becoming more popular and growing git adoption because of GitHub's growth in users and projects, which likely stems from GitHub's free hosting and user experience.

Subversion servers tended to hold more and more projects and branches and got slow on old hardware at least, as I experienced it, so I believe that inspired people to check out Mercurial and Git. However that on its own doesn't explain the explosion, as that would just show a transition of users from svn to hg or git.

The fact that Linus and the other Linux kernel developers used git provided more credibility. Git is also a great tool, in my opinion, but that is subjective.

But, Michael's answer appears to be the best (need to add git-core and git use together).

Looking at Michael's graph- this is of installation of git-core and git on Debian systems, so I think the reason could be the explosion of Ubuntu use, which if memory serves correctly was in the mid-2000s, which corresponds to the start of the curve in 2006.

Then GitHub was a free hosting service founded in 2008 and in my opinion was easier to use than Sourceforge and others, which added to the acceleration.

I also think that Bundler, with support for installing/updating gems via a :git option in the Gemfile, came around the time originally in question (late 2009):

http://yehudakatz.com/2009/11/03/using-the-new-gem-bundler-today/

RoR development doesn't account for the curve, and the :git option in Gemfiles I see isn't used a tremendous amount, but on the Rails side it seemed that this was when people started realizing it was much easier to have your own project and repo in GitHub, that using GitHub and forking made more sense, and the word spread. That may account for some of the acceleration around that time.

So, I think the answer is that Ubuntu is the primary driver, followed by GitHub, which spurred on Bundler's use of it, and usage continues to rise as the good word spreads.

Looking at the corrected graph in Michael's answer, showing both git-core and git on Debian systems, the question seems to be why git started to become popular in 2006 on Debian systems and why it exponentially grew between 2006-2012.

The reason could be the strong adoption of Debian-based linux distributions, like Ubuntu which started to become popular around 2005-2006 and became the #1 distro up until around 2011 when Mint, also Debian, became #1. Today in the end of 2012, Mint is still #1 and Ubuntu #3 according to DistroWatch.

GitHub, founded in 2008, provided free git hosting and between 2008 and 2012 has become the #1 source repository service in the world with ~2.5 million users and ~4.5 million projects according to Wikipedia in late 2012.

For those into Ruby on Rails, Rails and many other projects switched from Rubyforge to GitHub in the late 2000s. In addition, Bundler was introduced around the time originally in question (late 2009) with support for installing/updating gems via a :git option in the Gemfile, and Bundler was included as a dependency of Rails 3.

Projects in Python, Javascript, C, C++, Java, CSS, etc. were also coming to GitHub.

Those that wanted to contribute to the projects on GitHub needed to fork the project in GitHub, use a local git client to clone the repository before making amendments and pushing them back into GitHub and doing a pull request. This was much simpler than other methods used before and arguably was a significant reason that it was adopted by the projects that moved to GitHub or decided to start there.

So, I think the answer is that it is a combination of adoption of Debian-based distros, along with GitHub usage, and git adoption in frameworks themselves (perhaps due to GitHub's ease of use).