There's one further point the article missed, which is: locking of binary assets.<p>For any file which cannot be merged, you need to have a "lock/checkout, edit, commit" workflow.<p>There's no point allowing two people to have a PNG file in their checkout, edit it, and commit it, only for one to get the message "sorry, someone else edited it, your edits are now based on an out-of-date version, deal with it". You need to enforce the "lock, edit, commit" workflow on all files which cannot be merged.<p>Essentially, binary files cannot be merged, and therefore all binary files require this workflow. I'm sure there are some exceptions, I think Microsoft offers a merge tool for Word files. But I've never seen it hooked up to a VCS. But I suppose in principle it, or a similar merge algorithm for a particular file format, could be. But even then, there'll still be all the other binary files, for which no such merge algorithm is configured.<p>All project have some binary files e.g. PNGs. So all projects are affected by this, and require this workflow on those files.<p>Yet a DVCS cannot offer it as there is no central place to maintain the lock.<p>Subversion offers this workflow however it isn't enabled by default.<p>A VCS needs to offer this functionality as every project needs it, and it should be enabled by default for all files the VCS doesn't know how to merge.