Apache Subversion, often abbreviated SVN, is a centralized version control system. The Subversion project’s own book records that in early 2000 the company CollabNet began “seeking developers to write a replacement for CVS.” The aim, the book explains, was to keep “the basic ideas of CVS, but without the bugs and misfeatures,” a goal often summarized as CVS done right.
The book credits Jim Blandy with conceiving both the Subversion name and the basic design of its data store, and dates the contact with Karl Fogel to February 2000 with detailed design work commencing in May 2000. The team deliberately did not try to break new ground; according to the book they “just wanted to fix CVS” and to make a system familiar enough that any CVS user could switch with little effort.
The official Apache Subversion site describes the result as “enterprise-class centralized version control for the masses,” with a stated vision of being a reliable, simple centralized system serving users from individuals to large enterprises. It was founded by CollabNet in 2000 and later became a top-level project of the Apache Software Foundation.
Through the 2000s Subversion was the leading centralized version control tool, widely adopted in both open-source and corporate settings. It held that position until distributed systems, led by git, reshaped how teams collaborated later in the decade.