Version control systems (VCS) like Git help software teams manage changes to source code over time. Git keeps track of every code modification in a database, allowing developers to revert mistakes and compare code versions. Local VCS stores changes locally, while centralized VCS maintains a central repository for checkouts and check-ins. Distributed VCS distributes version databases across developer systems and servers for high availability, with changes pushed locally then to servers. Git is a popular third-generation distributed VCS.