@lwriemen But it's the entire point!
Pre-distributed version control was very online: you couldn't make your changes without worrying that others are blocking your changes.
With git, you can actually make your own mess, offline, not affecting anyone else.
@lwriemen I think "pull" is the most online git command for most people (?) though - like, the entire point of it is to touch the other side.
So splitting it up into the online "fetch" and offline "merge" may be a new thing to some.