At the end of the day everything depends on the organization. In a hectic startup where requirements change on an hourly basis and releases are made several times a day, I would absolutely insist on keeping the log linear and as clear as possible. Tags are important, of course, but they're not that useful for analyzing a repository.
When I say "the evolution of the product" I really mean "the "evolution of the code". When a small feature branch with 5 commits - four of which say "wip" and the last one says "added color support" - gets merged as is, and all relevant information is held hostage by whatever Git platform the company is using this week and not inside the repository itself, the log is not useful to me regardless of any strategy.
But in a different setting I would not necessarily insist in the same way.
When I say "the evolution of the product" I really mean "the "evolution of the code". When a small feature branch with 5 commits - four of which say "wip" and the last one says "added color support" - gets merged as is, and all relevant information is held hostage by whatever Git platform the company is using this week and not inside the repository itself, the log is not useful to me regardless of any strategy.
But in a different setting I would not necessarily insist in the same way.