The subversion collective is aware of me now.  Well, more to the point, I am aware of them.  I have been blindly following the church of CheckOut-Edit-CheckIn, and did not realize that there's a whole other religion called Edit-Merge-Commit.  Having been introduced to and devoured Eric Sink's Source Control How To, I now realize that there are new horizons to pursue.  That being said, I've spent my entire life, as it were, suckling from sourcesafe.   Now, as I'm about to embark on adding another developer to our team of me, I find myself at a crossroads.  Do I take the familiar fork, or is now the time to journey down the road of the unknown. 

Subversion is probably the best long term solution, but I have decided to give SS 2005 a try.  Yes, I have found subversion forums and blogs blasting sourcesafe and describing various ways it should be put to death.  However, I have also found forums and blogs with folks for whom sourcesafe meets their needs and they are just fine with it (if not praising it).  With a team of 2, I'm not worried about working on the same things at the same time, and if it should so happen, we will just coordinate and wait for a needed file or files to be checked in.  Not a big deal.   No merging, no branching and  I already own a copy of SS 2005 (purchased before I knew about the free/open source solutions available).  We also have a couple people who make copy changes periodically and are not developers.  So there won't be the need to explain a new system or methodology to them. 

That being said, I am now aware of this alternate religion.  The subversion borg may be powerful, and joining the collective compelling.  However, I feel that I work best with my individuality intact.  Surely I've proven that to you by now?   I will keep an open mind going forward however.  In the meantime, I've got work to do, so I will get SS working, share the code that only I have locally, and then we will move on with our lives in the short term.