DVCS vs Subversion smackdown, round 3

That title is probably a little pretentious, since the topic of rival version control systems has probably gone a few zillion more rounds than that. The context here is that in a previous blog post I argued that the recent rise of DVCS (Git, Mercurial) is less due to their essential D (distributed) nature, but the accidental weaknesses of Subversion, the dominant centralized VCS. The weaknesses I mentioned are:

• Poor merging
• Lack of offline commits

Since the Subversion folks are busy rectifying these weaknesses, I questioned whether DVCS is really the wave of the future. That was round 1. Round 2 came when my colleague Pete came galloping to the defense of DVCS, and I would also include the comments in response to my blog post. This is round 3, the response to the responses.

I am a Torch bearer

I am a Torch bearer. More specifically, I am now a proud owner of a BlackBerry Torch 9800. This came as a surprise to me, actually, since I had no plans to buy one. The Torch is an AT&T phone: even after unlocking it, the Torch's 3G radio does not work on my T-Mobile network (wrong frequency). I own a Torch because my MissingLight app became a Regional Selection in RIM's 2010 BlackBerry Super Apps Developer Challenge, and the  prize for that honor is a new Torch. I'm not complaining.