Correction, that's all branches and all tags of all ASF projects. Not useful.
> Want to work on Apache httpd? > svn checkout http://svn.apache.org/repos/asf/httpd/
Again, all versions and all tags thereof.
> Maybe you only care about mod_proxy? > svn checkout http://svn.apache.org/repos/asf/httpd/httpd/trunk/modules/pr...
That's just the one version.
Similarly, my project wants the latest sources under under specific branches from repositories from five different administrative domains. That's trivial in git. I can move them around freely, lock a revision of a particular repository while letting others move forward, have custom (potentially unpublished or unwelcome upstream) patches to fit into my build system or supported OSes that are tracked along with them.
Subversion has externals for this same reason. It's no excuse for poor repository management.