Dolt is Git for Data: a SQL database that you can fork, clone, branch, merge

You can also use Git for data!

It’s a bit slower, but smart use of partial/shallow clones can address performance degradation on large repositories over time. You just need to take care of the transformation between “physical” trees/blobs and “logical” objects in your dataset (which may not have 1:1 mapping, as having physical layer more granular reduces likelihood of merge conflicts).

I’m also following Pijul, which seems very promising in regards to versioning data—I believe they might introduce primitives allowing to operate on changes in actual data structures rather than between lines in files, like with Git.

Add to that sound theory of patches, and that’s a definite win over Git (or Doit for that matter, which seems to be same old Git but for SQL).

Git is too complicated. It's barely usable for daily tasks. Look at how many people have to Google for basic things like uncommitting a commit, or cleaning your local repo to mirror a remote one. Complexity is a liability. Mercurial has a nicer interface. And now I see the real simplicity of non-distributed source control systems. I have never actually needed to work in a distributed manner, just client-server. I have never sent a patch to another dev to patch into their local repo or whatnot. All this complexity seems like a solution chasing after a problem - at least for most developers. What works for Linux isn't necessary for most teams.