SVN supports locks. And recommends these for binary files. http://svnbook.red-bean.com/en/1.5/svn-book.pdf Linux is subdivided into "maintainers" who manage areas of the product so their intrinsic management hierarchy implies merges will be slight. Operating Systems are very complex but also very well understood. Some random product with scores of developers and normally very weak formal software engineering processes will not work will with GIT or any other source control system unless commits to the central repository are daily or more often. Of course, the real solution is to replace the posers with real software engineers; but we know management wants to pay peanuts so we have to use the appropriate herd control.