Svn's complete inability to handle merges at a file level may have been simpler, but was by no means better. Needing to coordinate who is allowed to edit each

Svn's complete inability to handle merges at a file level may have been simpler, but was by no means better. Needing to coordinate who is allowed to edit each file in order to avoid a painful merge is common with svn, and nearly unheard of with git. Svn looks at the inherent complexity of multiple people working on the same code base, shrugs, and figures that it is somebody else's problem.