In a followup to a previous post (on which I also commented) John Napiorkowski points out that it appears Google is now doing the right thing. I didn't find the reddit thread quite as informative as he seemed to, but the Google Groups discussion is a good, quick read.

I've been using Subversion since about version 0.12 (released sometime in 2002 I imagine). I've been on the dev and user mailing lists for just as long. Since that time version control systems have seen major improvements. It's hard to believe that the best open source version control system ten years ago was CVS. There are now a wealth of systems and most of them are targeted at a distributed development model. One thing that distinguishes Subversion from the others is that it continues in the tradition of a centralized repository and has eschewed the trend toward decentralization. I think it's great that there are now so many choices. I also hope to see Subversion continue to thrive, and so I was pleased to see several posts about a recent Subversion Vision Conference. The conference was really an informal gathering of a small number of Subversion developers and their attempt to plan a roadmap for the next few years of svn development. The roadmap is currently unpublished and unofficial, but I expect that it will appear, in some form, sometime soon.