Highly debatable.
CVS has a horrendous UI, but didn’t have a tendency to corrupt itself at the drop of a hat and didn’t require locking files to edit them by default (and then require a repository admin to come in and unlock files when a colleague went on holidays with files checked out). Also didn’t require shared write access to an SMB share (one of the reasons it corrupted itself so regularly).
It sucked; but honestly, not using anything is even worse than SourceSafe.
I still ‘member articles calling it a source destruction system. Good times.
> It sucked; but honestly, not using anything is even worse than SourceSafe.
There have always been alternatives. And even when you didn’t use anything, at least you knew what to expect. Files didn’t magically disappear from old tarballs.