1. I wasn't around when the system was set up. I think the idea was that developers could work together on an incremental version in dev repo. Then it could be pushed out as a clear update in the live repo.
2. It was what someone chose 4 years ago. The guy has since left. Everyone is familiar with SVN. SVN is pretty easy to get into. We haven't seen a need to change.
1. Why bother with two SVN repos? 2. Any specific reason for SVN at all (large files, binary files, non-technical users)