Plastic SCM vs Git  -  2018 edition

(This blogpost was originally published at Medium.)

I don't know about you but I've always enjoyed a good David and Goliath story. There's something about the heroic underdog standing their ground against the big foe that captures my imagination: whether it's Frodo going up against Sauron, Luke Skywalker taking on the Empire, or Plastic SCM holding its own against Git.

Ok, maybe the last isn't quite the same - but hear me out. At conferences or other events, people always ask me, "How is Plastic different to Git?" They are always curious (and at times mildly affronted) as to how we can possibly compete against the much-loved Torvalds' dominant creation that's used and contributed to by multinational giants like Atlassian, Microsoft, GitHub, GitLab, and others.

With powerful friends like that, it may seem entirely crazy to put your trust in Plastic. And yet, over 2500 developer companies including large-and-small game studios, insurance agencies, health care companies, aerospace companies, automotive companies, and more have done exactly that.

So, what is it that makes us different? In short, we've taken the age-old underdog story and tweaked it. While Luke Skywalker exploits the Death Star's single weakness to entirely destroy it, at Plastic total destruction isn't what we're after. At least not entirely.