Today I was on a conference call with an internal Microsoft contact (who I shall not name to protect his livelihood). Subversion, the popular open source-control client, will announce next week that they are partnering with Microsoft to create an OSS friendly source control provider that leverages many of the benefits of TFS internally.

"It really makes sense for us. Microsoft's Team Foundation Source control integrates deeply into the IDE, the only editor that developers need." -- a Subversion core developer commented

One of the higher-ups that helped finalize the deal was overheard saying, "I think this will finally put a nail in the coffin of other source control systems to create one system to rule them all!"

Some notable changes for the upcoming version:

• The check-in/check-out model will be used. This is because writing code collaboratively is so unbelievably similar to reading books in a library. That edit-merge-commit model just wasn't working out for anyone anyway.
   
• Local files will be locked by default. This allows project owners to keep tabs on who is modifying files at all times. It also encourages people to take ownership of a module. Studies show that most people don't understand other people's code, so this will keep others paws out of your module!
   
• Merging will be made more difficult, to prevent frequent use. It was found that merging is painful for folks and thus, they should do it as seldom as possible.
   
• All actions performed within Visual Studio. Developers don't use any other editors anyway, and with the ease of developing Visual Studio add-ins, this was a no brainer! We will not allow any other clients access to prevent confusion.

These are just some of the features coming out in Subversion Team Edition 2009 for Professionals, and I am excited to use it!