Linus was making fun of SVN in his talk ( http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4XpnKHJAok8 ). One of his point was, that SVN chose the wrong way right from the start and there is no way to have "CVS done right" because CVS is hopeless by design.
CVS may have had serious flaws, but I find Linus' original revision control practices to be less than optimal:
"The Linux kernel source code used to be maintained without the help of an automated source code management system, mostly because of Linus Torvalds' dislike of centralized SCM systems.
In 2002, Linux kernel development switched to BitKeeper, a SCM system which satisfied Linus Torvalds' technical requirements."
Nearly a decade without a revision control system?
If you compare granularity of tracking and utility of historical version control across different projects of that era, such as FreeBSD vs. Linux, I think you'll find that Linus' position is clearly false.
