I'm pretty sure this initiative is geared towards CS students/teachers looking to host their class projects, not humanities teachers looking to host their cours

I'm pretty sure this initiative is geared towards CS students/teachers looking to host their class projects, not humanities teachers looking to host their coursework. In that light, there is no need to reduce the complexity of branching and merging because those are real-world skills that CS students need to learn. As for a VCS that helps non-technical teachers manage their content, I absolutely agree that there is still a need for that but that's a completely different problem space.