While I also find git-annex more elegant, its cross-platform story is weaker. Note that LFS was originally a collaboration between GitHub and Bitbucket (maybe? Some forge vendor I think). One had the implementation and the other had the name. They met at a Git conference and we have what we have today. My main gripes these days are the woefully inadequate limits GitHub has in place for larger projects. Coupled with the "must have all objects locally to satisfy an arbitrary push", any decently sized developer community will blow the limit fairly quickly.

FD: I have contributed to git-lfs.

To its absolute detriment

Here is a talk by a person who adores it: Yann Büchau: Staying in Control of your Scientific Data with Git Annex https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IdRUsn-zB2s

While Yann has built many things with git-annex, we should be clear that the creator of git-annex is relatively singular, Joey Hess.

Here is a comment about Joey: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=14908529

And an interview When power is low, I often hack in the evenings by lantern light. https://usesthis.com/interviews/joey.hess/