Didn't Sun have Gatekeepers carefully controlling what commits were made to any given gate, thereby ensuring that the actual source control would never be the limiting factor in scaling things out? (Don't get me wrong, I love mercurial, I just don't think this particular example demonstrates much because it always sounded like they'd sidestepped the issue.)
Yes, any putback to ON required an advocate to vouch for your change. Basically a neck to wring when things go wrong. You generally had me chance so don’t F. Up.