Moving Windows development to git sounds like a completely irrational decision from a technical standpoint that was driven mostly by marketing concerns.
Am I on some kind of a black/gray list? Either that, or you specifically remember my name, which sounds odd.
- Branching in SD sucked, the only way to work on multiple features at once was to either have multiple copies of the repo or constantly fiddle with "package files" that contained your changes, and the whole thing shit the bed if the server went down.
- All the new hires both from college and the industry all know git and there were an increasing number of them who just found it bizarre that Microsoft was still on a proprietary, non-distributed system.
- Higher-ups (correctly, IMO) decided that VSTS/TFS had to have git in order to remain competitive, and that we should be eating our own dogfood. That's partly a marketing concern but also a legitimate technical decision.
The marketing here is: it's cool to work at Microsoft again!
But that makes it a technical decision! If it's easier to attract talented engineers because you're using git, that improves the product. I was trying to make this point in my other comment too: OP is drawing a sharp line between "marketing decisions" and "engineering decisions" and sneering at the former, but actually the boundary can be pretty fuzzy.
Exhibit A: GVFS was solely invented as a hack to make git usable by the Windows team according to the Windows team blog.
(Yes, there is some sour grapes and sarcasm in this post)