You're right, everything that the CMS does currently could also be done with raw Git messages. The CMS is designed to have pluggable backends. We had an early version working with Git directly. We decided to focus in one backend at a time rather than having several half integrated because the core features were evolving too fast to support several backends initially.
We plan on support raw Git in the future again. It's a matter of making sure it's useful for more people other than developers that already know how to use Git.
Netlify CTO here.
You're right, everything that the CMS does currently could also be done with raw Git messages. The CMS is designed to have pluggable backends. We had an early version working with Git directly. We decided to focus in one backend at a time rather than having several half integrated because the core features were evolving too fast to support several backends initially.
We plan on support raw Git in the future again. It's a matter of making sure it's useful for more people other than developers that already know how to use Git.