Version Control Software

[Anssi Saari]

cutems93 <ms2597 at cornell.edu> writes:

> Thank you everyone for such helpful responses! Actually, I have one more question. Does anybody have experience with closed source version control software? If so, why did you buy it instead of downloading open source software? Does closed source vcs have some benefits over open source in some part? 

I have some experience with ClearCase. I don't know why anyone would buy
it since it's bloated and slow and hard to use and likes to take over
your computer. I was very happy to dump it when my team was allowed to
use whatever we wanted but then we were not doing software either.

ClearCase is also admin heavy for the above reasons. I guess big
businesses buy things like that because other big businesses buy things
like that. Presumably they keep it because it's cheaper to pay
maintenance than move all source to some other system.

Now granted, Linux development went to commercial Bitkeeper for a while
since Linus Torvalds found it superior to CVS sometime over a decade
ago. When the agreement ended, Torvalds himself developed Git to be what
he needs. Other projects sprang up around the same time to get that job,
this means at least Mercurial if Wikipedia is to be believed.

Oh, as far as I know, commercial software vendors always ban their
customers from publishing any kinds of benchmarks or other comparisons
so it's unlikely you can find anything concrete for your commercial
vs. free choice.