Some of the thread has eluded to the software development process, of which, version control is only one component and is not a silver bullet for all of the other pieces. Specifically, version control is not revision control. Version control is concerned with versioning state. Revision control is concerned with authorizing changes. Version control systems have access rights but aren't oriented toward revision control processes. Much of the discussion necessarily compares centralized vs. distributed though the terms are intermixed in the discussion but mean something much different each context. I think if version control can be decoupled from the rest of the software development process, version control issues can be satisfied quite easily. The rest of the software development process seems much less defined to me for Boost and I think fuels much of the frustration sometimes seen.