Git
2005
Git was created by Linus Torvalds in 2005 for development of the Linux kernel, with other kernel developers contributing to its initial development. Since 2005, Junio Hamano has been the core maintainer. As with most other distributed version control systems, and unlike most client–server systems, every Git directory on every computer is a full-fledged repository with complete history and full version-tracking abilities, independent of network access or a central server. Git is free and open-source software distributed under GNU General Public License Version 2.
April 2005
Git development began in April 2005, after many developers of the Linux kernel gave up access to BitKeeper, a proprietary source-control management (SCM) system that they had been using to maintain the project since 2002. The copyright holder of BitKeeper, Larry McVoy, had withdrawn free use of the product after claiming that Andrew Tridgell had created SourcePuller by reverse engineering the BitKeeper protocols. The same incident also spurred the creation of another version-control system, Mercurial.
April 2005
The development of Git began on 3 April 2005. Torvalds announced the project on 6 April and became self-hosting the next day. The first merge of multiple branches took place on 18 April. Torvalds achieved his performance goals; on 29 April, the nascent Git was benchmarked recording patches to the Linux kernel tree at the rate of 6.7 patches per second. On 16 June, Git managed the kernel 2.6.12 release.
July 2005
Torvalds turned over maintenance on 26 July 2005 to Junio Hamano, a major contributor to the project. Hamano was responsible for the 1.0 release on 21 December 2005 and remains the project's core maintainer.
