[atoav]

As someone who is at the intersection of tech and arts one of the things I like about using git in projects is that it is very clear what is the latest official defintive final variant of a piece of data and you don't have to ask anybody to get it.

When I worked as a VFX freelancer I was amazed at the number of hours (=money) burned by marketing agencies who didn't manage to give me the definitive variant for a simple list of things they wanted. In one instance they gave me everything they had, including crude and unrecognisable filenames, hints about things that I should ignore via telephone etc. I had to make sense of it and compile a list which I sent them to approve. They ended up approving another list (!) which they themselves sent me two weeks prior and they only managed to correct this once I hinted at this.

Of course this is a example of saw qhow things should never be. This usually involves somebody getting sick and some uninformed person taking over etc. But what I learned on film sets is that you should choose the defaults of your communication culture in such a way, that it works under the absolute worst conditions (bad weather, hungry, stressed, confused, etc).

And I have seen so many organisations fail at precisely that. If you get I'll someone else should be able to take over without heading to an oracle. This is not a special function limited to a version control workflow, it is something that has to do with clear communication.

Using git can sometimes help avoiding the whole problem by making it obvious which file is the latest and which is a variant of it, the people using it will have to use clear communication as well (e.g. by writing good commit messages, choosing the "right" commit sizes, naming things the right way etc). So if you know how to use git, you just might value clear communications a little bit more than the average person.

[gumby]

> As someone who is at the intersection of tech and arts one of the things I like about using git in projects is that it is very clear what is the latest official defintive final variant of a piece of data and you don't have to ask anybody to get it.

As git is a distributed system I think it’s not at all clear what the definitive final variant might be —- and that is a strength.

That can be handled externally to git via ad hoc convention, say by using a system like gitlab or github and letting it declare one as “primary”, or by having someone post to a mailing list (“Commit X on a repo you can reach at URI Y is the official release”) both of which are common.

But in your example various people could mail you commits and not have any consensus on which is authoritative.

[ISL]

Git Tags can substantially address this concern.

[brudgers]

you should choose the defaults of your communication culture in such a way, that it works under the absolute worst conditions

The defaults are sensible. Throw money at it and pay someone enough to sort things out and get it done, e.g. you as a freelancer get a data dump and ask the right question and the problem is solved. Sure it costs money. But everything costs money.

Git works great among peers. But most organizations are hierarchical. And the boss doesn't have to give a shit about which draft is the latest because the boss is the boss.

[tatersolid]

> And the boss doesn't have to give a shit about which draft is the latest because the boss is the boss.

As a boss myself I have to say: I totally give a shit. Salaries are my company’s #1 expense by a wide margin. I don’t want my staff spending their time manually merging docs received via email when there are much better solutions out there. I hire people because they are smart and can get shit done that makes money, not because I want servants.

This is the killer app for Office 365 and google docs: stop wasting time emailing shit around, one canonical version even outside of company walls.

[agumonkey]

most offices are an immense source of waste regarding information exchange.

some would say whoever solves that problems is filthy rich