A number of source websites expose their source via the git:// protocol. Unfortunately, the git protocol recently broke on one I used, but the git http:// protocol was working. Instead of changing my fetching scripts, I found a clever url replacement in git using the following command:

git config --global url.https://gitsite.com/.insteadOf git://gitsite.com/

This allows you to change the protocol per URL instead of globally. Exactly what I needed.