That's a big leap at best, misrepresentation at worst. Git is specifically a decentralised version control system. Cloning the remote branches is how you view

That's a big leap at best, misrepresentation at worst. Git is specifically a decentralised version control system. Cloning the remote branches is how you view and browse remote repos. Viewing remote non bare repos via FTP is fine but im not sure I understand the problem. The problem is network traffic? Cool, checkout a shallow copy depth=1. Browsing? I'm confused how ftp is worse than say GitHub? Or GitHub with some of the file browser add-ons/greasemonkey scripts. I'm also pretty confused by the use case that ftp beats keeping a local working copy. Presumably you want to edit these files eventually right? Are you also editing remotely? What about a remote X session or SSH? I'm just confused by the use case not saying you're holding it wrong. Try answering this: in what world or under which conditions does this solution make sense? I'm not saying it's wrong I'm saying I can't see what conditions make this make sense.