The keystrokes of ^H Backspace are not a "collaborative process". The idiosyncratic persistence of RAM buffers of a text editor is also not a "collaborative process". Why do you think "git commit" on a local unpublished repo is collaborative? I can only guess that it's because the word "commit" is in "git commit"? Well, syntax is not semantics.

>I'm very aware of what DVCS is.

I think many people with your position know the commands syntax of DVCS but don't actually grok the "draft work" philosophy of DVCS. Therefore you assign label of "collaborative process" to unrelated concepts such as the typing habits the programmer happens to execute on his laptop's harddrive. Unfortunately, the programmer persisting his editor's RAM buffers to disk happens to use the command "git commit" which distorts the thinking and causes people to label that action as "collaborative"!

The "pull request" and "merge" is collaborative. The raw "git commit" is not.