For what it's worth, as a long-time user of CVS and a recent user of
git, I am extremely impressed with git's design and capabilities.
I can't speak to how it compares with other distributed VCSs, since
it is the only one I'm familiar with. However, I personally find the
advantages of distributed VCS in general to be quite compelling. It is
very nice to be able to look at the revision history, change logs, etc,
without using the network.
Even better is the ability to make changes on a local branch without
having commit access to the repository. I think this feature has the
potential to attract more developers, because it allows them to work
more conveniently before they have sufficiently proven themselves to
earn write access to the official repository.
It is also very comforting that its design prevents a security breach
from being able to modify the revision history. The git database is
implemented as a non-mutable purely functional data structure, where
pointers to a node are essentially represented as a secure cryptographic
hash of the entire history leading to that node.
I think it would be a great shame if we switched to subversion or stayed
with CVS. Once you have become accustomed to the benefits of
distributed VCS, it is very painful to go back.
Mark