The inception of code tracking dates back to 1972. Yes. In 1972, the Source Code Control System (SCCS) was developed. It was not an opensource application, but rather a closed source application. It was given away free with Unix operating system.
Later came the Revision Control System (RCS) in 1982 which was released as open source license. The RCS keeps track of all the changes as revisions and not as versions.The disadvantage of RCS is that it can track changes only one file at a time.
Concurrent Versions System (CVS) which was developed during 1986-1990 is an opensource application with the advantage that it can keep track of changes taking place in multiple files and also more than one user concurrently.
Apache Subversion: It was developed in the year 2000 and is an open source software. The advantage of subversion is that it keeps track of all the changes that are happening in a directory. Even now, many of the project are being tracked using the Apache Subversion.
Bitkeeper SCM: The bitkeeper SCM is a closed source and a proprietary application developed in the year 2000. It is a distributed Version Control System. The Bitkeeper SCM community verision was released as free and was used for managing the source code of Linux Kernel. Linux being a completely opensource operating system, there aroused an opposition towards using the Bitkeeper SCM for managing its source code since there are chances that Bitkeeper can no longer be free version and is a proprietary software. Just like how the Linux community anticipated, the Bitkeeper SCM community version was no longer free.
This made Linus Torvalds to develop GIT and hence GIT was born in April 2005. GIT is a distributed VCS and an opensource and free software. It is compatible with both Unix and Windows operating System. It is faster than other SCMs with better safeguards against data corruption.
