Hmm... Git's commit chain might be a blockchain (in the minimal sense of the word), since I think it uses that hash chaining technique.

But if I were describing Git to others, I wouldn't say "Git is a distributed, blockchain-based VCS" because that would give the wrong idea.

I do. My argument is here: https://www.fossil-scm.org/home/doc/trunk/www/blockchain.md

I think it's a bit strange to call the basic idea behind a Merkle tree a "blockchain" -- we already had a word for Merkle trees before Bitcoin came about.

Not your op but I personally do not. The way the word has evolved blockchain includes the distributed consensus. I understand there is a concept of linked blocks, into a chain, and technically Bitcoin and folk are those. If someone said blockchain (datastructure) I would understand it as being only the data structure.

git is a chain of blocks, kinda. it's distributed. there is no consensus. It's not a blockchain by how most people would define it.

Not really. In bitcoin one chain is considered the truth, and this may change with chain length. in git, all branches are the truth.

blocktree, more than blockchain.

Aren't there some altcoins that have attempted to do a blocktree? I haven't paid much attention to them, other than reading about one a while back, but it seems like that wouldn't really go anywhere because once you do away with a single, unified, public view of truth you might as well be using a lightning network?