Fossil was created for the purpose of managing the development of SQLite. SQLite was originally versioned using CVS. The cut-over from CVS to Fossil happened almost exactly 15 years ago, as I am typing this.

Over the years of managing SQLite, I've made a lot of good choices and a lot of bad choices. Looking back, I think switching to Fossil (and not to Git or Mercurial) was one of the best choices I've made. This is not to say that it was a "smart" choice; rather it was a lucky choice. I did not understand at the time how important Fossil would become to SQLite development. But now I cannot imagine how SQLite could have survived and prospered without it.

Happy 15-th Anniversary of SQLite on Fossil!

The cut over was 15 years ago, but you started developing Fossil 17 years ago. We missed its birthday by 22 days!

Celebration post from two years ago.
Celebration post from 2019!

Actually the development happened before the first commit.
Knowing you, you probably had a working prototype 12 hours before the first commit.

Well done to you and all the fossil developers over the years.

That I'm theatrically upset every time I have to adapt my workflows to a changed web interface, vanishing command line options, or new anti-robot defenses is solely because of my inflexibility, and not due to flaws in Fossil.

Fossil is in the top 3 of my most-frequently-used and most-loved programs. I'm using it daily, and I'm thinking of hacking¹ it almost daily.

I'd consider myself a "core SCM" user, not taking advantage of the following features: alerts, backoffice, chat, extcgi, fileedit, forum, fusefs support, import/export, json API, patch command, wiki. But even with the many unused features, Fossil still doesn't feel bloated.

Thank you very much for many fun programming hours, and for letting me be part of Fossil (the community, and in a modest way even the program itself).

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1. ^{^} My TODO list has more than 100 items, and several experimental patches are always cooking in parallel, but most of them only make it into my private build; right now I'm working on word-wrapping web UI diffs, something that may be suitable to submit for consideration.

For me, Fossil has been a breath of fresh air in the DVCS landscape, allowing non-technical users to enjoy of the advantages that developers take for granted (usually under pretty obtuse interfaces).

Since 2011, Fossil has not only changed the way I write prose and code, but also the way I do research, classes, (h)ac(k)tivist workshops and publishing, in a reproducible way. Being able to develop custom publishing/research workflows, powered by Fossil, allow us to do stuff even a couple(ish) of years before similar counterparts based in Git.

Thanks Fossil community for the gift of empowering simplicity and the welcoming and intelligent people behind.

Happy birthday.

Fossil is to me a glimpse of the future of data storage; I'm really thankful.

I've been almost using fossil for 5+ years, by which I mean every few months I start a new project using it, or try to bend an existing one into it. Typically I learn a bunch of things, build a smaller number of useful 'almosts', and then shelve it, because, priorities. Although I've not yet grown from seed to fruit the process has unfailingly been worthwile and illuminating. I intend to keep experimenting.

This is decidedly different from my experience with Git, which although used daily and for which my mental knowledge-base volume is far larger, I feel no allegience to whatsoever.

Thank you for Fossil!

Fossil (and SQLite) have been central to my computer use for 8+ years. Nary a file gets opened on my multitude of Haiku, Linux, Windows or *BSD machines that isn't captured in a Fossil repo... 'fossil all ui' is my meta-manager of life and SQLite has become my "cross-platform" language, by virtue of being built with C, and not some "cross-platform" language that doesn't run on all my platforms. I'm pushing more and more into SQLite triggers of my application system (some in :memory:) and data files, effectively "flow" coding the events through system state and data in a way that cuts down on the "application" code.

I have effectively used (and abused) Fossil and SQLite for project management beyond simply code versioning and on into IoT data collection systems from mobile (happily having purchased your encrypted version)and edge devices with Fossil. Dead simple to build robust redundant systems standing up Fossil servers behind a Caddy reverse-proxy.

We are lucky you've made the good choices and I greatly appreciate your stable vision and steadfast attention to simple pragmatic correctness without chasing every silver-bullet trend of new language and resistance to dependencies - especially in the browser javascript.

anyway... jumble of words of praise and THANK YOU, THANK YOU, and THANK ALL the contributors to your vision of 50+ year file formats and systems.

Hooray! I am a bit late to party, but would like to join in and celebrate the milestone date!

Fossil is one of my favourite boring pieces of technology.

Fossils on fossils.
Compressed layers adding up.
Move through time and learn.

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Fossil artifacts.
Every layer visible.
Everyone can see.

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Store the things you want.
Everything new will be hashed.
Slowing down with age.