A lot of open software projects have their own CVS servers, which are used by the project developers as a central repository for all their work. Developers often make improvements to the sources in the CVS repository on a daily basis; and often, these developers are scattered around the world, yet CVS provides the necessary mechanism to unite their project into a centralized, cohesive whole. CVS creates the "organizational glue" that allows these developers to make improvements to the code without stepping on each other's toes, losing important data or missing each other's critical updates to particular source files.