How can I get Foswiki to play nice with other RCS tools?

Foswiki wants to keep all the files in data/Web/*.txt writable by the web server user. Other RCS tools like 'co' will refuse to operate on a file that is writable unless you explicitly force the overwriting of the working file. When 'ci' checks the file back in, it modifies the file permissions so it is not writable, which Foswiki doesn't like. Is there a way to get Foswiki to better cooperate with command line RCS users?