There is no central repository system in Go. No Maven, no rubygems, no packagist , ...<p>code.google.com&#x2F;foo&#x2F;bar package is the physical address were go get command will fetch the package. If that address is broken then the code is broken.<p>Go doesn&#x27;t have a package manager either. Go Get is certainly not a package manager.<p>So when you use a third party package you have to fork it somewhere. The problem is that 2 libraries with the same exact code are different packages if their address is different. So sometimes it becomes a bit insane to work with third party libraries if people start forking them for safety.<p>I consider this whole package url thing as a design mistake. But most of the Go community sees no problem with it.