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I would argue that distributed version control systems (like git and Mercurial) are better for protecting your database than centralized version control, since you can restore the entire repo from any checkout. So, if your central server spontaneously combusts, along with all of your backups, you can restore it by running git init on the new server, then git push from any developer's machine.

I would argue that distributed version control systems (like git and Mercurial) are better for protecting your database than centralized version control, since you can restore the entire repo from any clone. So, if your central server spontaneously combusts, along with all of your backups, you can restore it by running git init on the new server, then git push from any developer's machine.

As for why we would trust the writers of revision control systems to know what they're doing.. I can't speak for other VCS's, but I'm pretty confident that Linus Torvalds understands filesystems.

There's also the fact that open-source projects can afford to reinvent the wheel whenever it's convenient, since you don't have the same kinds of resource constraints that commercial projects do. If you have a volunteer who's an expert at writing databases, then why not use them?

As for why we would trust the writers of revision control systems to know what they're doing.. I can't speak for other VCS's, but I'm pretty confident that Linus Torvalds understands filesystems.

• Some developers don't want to write databases.
• Developers of commercial version control systems have time and resource constraints, so they can't afford to write a database when they have something close to what they want already.
• Users of commercial version control systems are less likely to care about the overhead of setting up and running a relational database, since they already have one.
• Users of commercial version control systems are more likely to want a relational database backing their revision data, since this may integrate with their processes better (like backups for example).

• Some developers don't want to write databases.
• Developers of commercial version control systems have time and resource constraints, so they can't afford to write a database when they have something close to what they want already. Also, developers are expensive, and database developers (as in, people who write databases) are probably more expensive, since most people don't have that kind of experience.
• Users of commercial version control systems are less likely to care about the overhead of setting up and running a relational database, since they already have one.
• Users of commercial version control systems are more likely to want a relational database backing their revision data, since this may integrate with their processes better (like backups for example).