I haven't seen anyone mention what seems to me the most obvious advantage of "git" for a large collaborative project like Boost: It is easy for a small group to clone their own version of the repository somewhere accessible (like git-hub of course, but any participant's development machine with the right Internet connection will do, as would something like dropbox) and work there until they are ready to expose it to wider audience. Similarly, a project started in git -- not necessarily with Boost in mind -- can potentially be merged into the central repository, after being edited to meet standards, complete with its history (less likely, of course, without some attention paid to Boost). This would be particularly useful when work is "speculative". People who want to work on something that they think might not work out are not discouraged from proper source control or integration because of fear of embarrasment because it turns out to have been a "stupid idea" -- either regarding the whole attempt, or regarding some dead end investigations. My experience is that innovation is frequently helped by some privacy in the early stages. Topher