Yeah, Google Code is based on Subversion, which isn't a distributed versioning system. We made the decision to switch to distributed when we moved to Mercurial, and I want to keep that flexibility. (Both Bazaar and Git are DCVSs.)

The advantage to keeping the distributed system is that it really enables people to fork the code without having to invest a lot of time and effort. On both Launchpad and GitHub, anybody can just upload their own changes to the code, make a branch, without approval of the project maintainers.

That means that, if someone says they want to work on something, they can do so and put their code in front of the entire audience without having to go through any process. It makes things faster and easier for people who want to contribute.