Mercurial, 20 years and counting: how are we still alive and kicking? [video]

Mercurial, a distributed version control system created in 2005, has remained actively developed and funded despite losing market dominance to Git in the 2010s, offering valuable lessons about open-source project sustainability and community resilience. The talk reveals how Mercurial has maintained relevance through modern tooling innovations, corporate backing, and continued technical competitiveness, challenging assumptions that market share decline equals project failure. For IT organizations, this demonstrates that alternative VCS platforms can remain viable long-term strategic options and highlights the importance of evaluating tools beyond mere popularity trends.