2009-05-15

In the corporate market

Even if centralized version control vanishes from the open source
world, I have a feeling it will be around for a *long* time in the
world of corporate development. Subversion is just starting to get
competitive with big commerical systems like Perforce and Clearcase --
especially now that we've added merge-tracking features. This market
isn't about to go away any time soon.

Ben Collins-Sussman, 2007-06-28, Re: A word of thanks to the Subversion team
Although I'm not sure that Subversion will vanish from the Open Source world, how damn I agree with Mr Collins-Sussman. Subversion is ready for the corporate market and has a few real advantages over commercial product:
  • price
  • easy to understand (and this is a true winner). Although I don't know about Perforce, I can tell that ClearCase is not for dummies.
  • Platform support and integration
  • fast setup. Moving a dev team from nothing to subversion should take no longer than a week of work (excluding training).
  • nearly zero admin job.
I'm thinking of getting a new post on this blog, something called how to win with Subversion? so stay tuned.