All server based vcs are push based. Certainly they can be used pull-based, where others diff code, send the patch, and a committer then integrates and commits. Git, on the other hand does two things differently. 1) it makes it vastly easier to create, submit, and integrate patches (because it was designed for it) and 2) it makes it vastly easier for the people making the patches, who don't have commit privs, to maintain their changes in their own repo, while still syncing with the master.
svn does not offer these features, which means that when you dont have commit privs, its a PITA to track and maintain your own version. I'll say that again: it makes it massively frustrating to maintain your own version. The result is that people dont, and the number of potential hackers is vastly reduced.
git, like svn, allows a small community, such as ASF, to manage and control a project - addressing legal and operational concerns. committers can push just as easily as with svn. but in addition, each committer can (if they so choose) also maintain relationships with a much greater community, each member of which can hack away on their own with a fully synced, fully versioned repo of their own. hackers get their own repo. committers have a really robust system for integrating patches.
If ASF wishes to do no more than have a small number of committers working on a project then indeed, svn suffices. its "good enough". the point of mikeal's post is that this is missing out hugely on the vast army of hackers.
I said in an earlier post that I had no skin in the game. that's true. now. i used to track tomcat. but it was such a pain in the arse to handle merging my code with the official code that I gave up. it just wasnt worth it. git would have solved every problem I had. perhaps by now I would be a committer on the tomcat project. who knows? svn made that a certain "no".
an organization like ASF needs a finite number of committers. git allows keeping that group small, yet engaging a much greater community.
but as mikeal says, its not about svn vs git. its about the mindset that sees no need for git because it sees no need for more than just committers.
