Re: Gitlab Migration

[Arthur Miller]

<tomas@tuxteam.de> writes:

> On Fri, Aug 27, 2021 at 05:34:26PM +1000, Tim Cross wrote:
>
> [...]
>
>> Yep, that mirrors what I'm seeing as well. Many younger users really use
>> it primarily to provide a unique identifier (login) and for when they
>> have to deal with institutions that don't provide other alternatives.
>
> I think part of the rush is nudge pressure applied by the Big Ones.
> It's not possible to monetise mail in the same way as it is possible
> to do with whatsapp, tiktok, twitter and the uncountable more or less
> "secure" messengers popping up here and there.
>
> The nice thing about those communications platforms (nice from the
> perspective of the venture capitalist) is that there's no separation
> of platform and UI, so they get direct control of the user's perception.
Another aspect of those is one we touched on in some of our previous
conversations a year or so ago.

The personal or company PR (public relations). It is sort of CV, persons or a
companies track of popularity, what useful and how much they have done and so
on. It is all about selection :). That is why Instagram is so popular I guess.

Email based workflow does not promote same degree of self-promotion for people,
so they will prefer public stuff. When they give you a PR it is visible on their
GH/GL, when they send you a patch, there is a record in some mail database, but
it is not as visible. 

> I opt out of that. Count me in whenever there is a platform which
> separates transport and clients the way mail does and has at least
> some choice of client applications with a perspective of diversity.
>
>> The other interesting trend I'm seeing is with many companies now
>> working to minimise email as part of their internal/external workflows.
>> Many companies are finding it a huge resource sink, cause of unnecessary
>> stress/pressure on staff, source of significant security concerns and a
>> real problem for records management.
>
> I have watched this process around the 2010s in one company. The
> decision was made at top level (they were convinced by some Microsoft 
> salesperson [1] to switch to Office 365 instead of mail, because...
> mail is old). Today, they still use mail, but have outsourced their
> whole communications infrastructure to Microsoft, GDPR be dammed.
Yes, everybody still uses mail, and a normal day in office for many, many peopel
is to just sit with Outlook or Lotus Notes and answer/write mails 8 hours a
day. I have seen this for last 15 years, but I do see a shift toward instant
messaging and video messaging/ip calls, amongst younger generation. I mean
"younger" in this context is in later 40's now :). But email is still the prime
way of "recording" stuff, confirming so to say.

> The resource sink, stress and pressure stemmed rather from that
> change, for those who had to use that "new" platform (not to
> talk about staff layoffs for the old sysadmins, but I disgress).
>
> Those having taken the decisions didn't have to use O365, they
> have secretaries. For them, it was success.
>
> This may sound like an off-topic rant, but I'm serious. Not all
> of this "mail is old" meme is for real. Some of it is propaganda
> (I emphasise: /some/ of it). So we should take each critique
> and address it one by one.
>
> To put it in other words: I won't pay a wholesale-ish "mail is
> old" argument. I want to have more solid stuff.
>
> Cheers
>
> [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gr%C3%ADma
>
>  - t
Your rants are always spot on.