Mercurial celebrates 20 years despite Git's dominance
Original: Mercurial, 20 years and counting: how are we still alive and kicking? [video]
Why This Matters
Demonstrates how open source projects can survive market dominance through sustained development
Mercurial distributed version control system marks two decades of active development since 2005. Despite losing popularity battle to Git in 2010s, project maintains sustained funding and modern tooling development.
At FOSDEM 2026, Mercurial developers Raphaël Gomès and Pierre-Yves David presented on the project's 20-year journey. Created in 2005, Mercurial has remained actively developed with modern tooling, new ideas, and sustained funding despite widespread perception that it 'lost' to Git. The talk addressed how Mercurial weathered Git's rise, its unrecognized impacts on users' lives, effects of large company involvement, and what attracts new users in 2025. Speakers examined contributor profiles, technical aspects, and community dynamics that shaped the project's trajectory. They leveraged historical insights to assess current version control landscape and predict future developments, emphasizing community-based open source relevance.