I work on monotone ( http://monotone.ca/ ) which is older and I think conceptually cleaner, and that was a reference to this earlier rant (last paragraph): http://lwn.net/Articles/249460/ . We've also gotten a few comments about the code being very nice, so I doubt it's really all that messy and unmaintainable.
Wait, you can't just write that and end your comment! What VCS do you work on?, if you're at liberty to share.