The initial report by André is about:
--8<---------------cut here---------------start------------->8---
$ guix pull
Updating channel 'nonguix' from Git repository at
'https://gitlab.com/nonguix/nonguix'...
guix pull: error: Git error: unexpected http status code: 503
--8<---------------cut here---------------end--------------->8---
So the situation is more likely: Guix from Savannah is reachable and
guix-foo is not.
For sure, we can discuss the case when Guix is unavailable. However,
the 'guix channel is special; see all conditionals using ’guix-channel?’.
Well, %default-guix-channel is somehow a corner use-case when the
regular use-case seems about a failure of additional channels.