Digest on "Version Control Systems"

In March 2007, a political scandal occurred in the United States: no one understood the changes in the already odious Patriot Act to allow the US president to single-handedly dismiss federal prosecutors. It turns out that unsuspecting congressmen voted for a whole bunch of amendments in a “bundle”, not realizing that there is a real “bomb” among them. Two paragraphs were deleted, and one new one was added, and it all happened just a few days before the vote, without notice, without justification, without notifying those concerned.

As soon as possible after the introduction of this amendment, seven federal prosecutors were dismissed. The echoes of this decision in the American political picture are still felt.

American geeks led by Tim O'Reilly and Karl Vogel (first: the owner of a notorious publishing house, second: the lead developer of Subversion) urge the American legislature to introduce a full-fledged version control system to prevent the possibility of recurring such incidents.
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Sources:

a) Tim O'Reilly: “Why Congress Needs a Version Control System”

b) Wikipedia: "Dismissal of US Attorneys Controversy"

c) WG: Federal Law of the Russian Federation of December 4, 2006 N 202- On Amendments to the Federal Law “On Science and the State Scientific and Technical Policy” and the Federal Law “On Archival Affairs in the Russian Federation” (an example of no need to make commit messages)

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The Better Explained blog quickly won the megaton of human attention by publishing two visually stunningly beautiful descriptions of version control systems.

a) Better Explained: "A Visual Guide to Version Control"

b) Better Explained: “Intro to Distributed Version Control (Illustrated)”

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And:

a) Presentation by Ben Collins-Sussman and Brian Fitzpatrick (leading Subversion developers): “The worst practices of using Subversion”

b) Nice Git Cheat Sheet

c) Mercurial Cheat Sheet