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Concerned about the long term implications of the high growth startup model... Gitlab is awesome and all that, but how can I be sure the free version will stay
by matheweis 11y ago
Concerned about the long term implications of the high growth startup model... Gitlab is awesome and all that, but how can I be sure the free version will stay that way in the long run?
Is the free (free as in beer, I'm not an open source zealot otherwise) Gitlab not just a part of the conversion funnel, eventually made unsustainable once growth plateaus?
- sytse 11y agoThanks for your question! We're a VC backed startup so we have to have a so called liquidity event at some point. As explained on https://about.gitlab.com/strategy/ https://about.gitlab.com/strategy/ our goal is to IPO instead of being aquired. This will ensure we can preserve our culture, mission and goals. There will always be an open source version of GitLab, more than 1000 people contributed and it the most popular self-hosted option, used on-premises by more than 100,000 organizations. They will keep going with the open source version, with our without GitLab Inc. But the MySQL purchase by Sun and Oracle has shown what can happen to projects when the company is acquired. The best option we saw is to at least codify our promise to the rest of the community in https://about.gitlab.com/about/#stewardship https://about.gitlab.com/about/#stewardship When we break our promise it is time to fork. Any suggestions are appreciated.
- matheweis 11y agoThanks for the answer - very helpful! Other (unrelated) minor things: - SAML support exists, but at last check was mostly broken. Universities in particular use SAML over OAuth (See http://www.incommonfederation.org/participants/ http://www.incommonfederation.org/participants/) - Resource usage seems very high for small shops; will there be a GitLab "lite"? ...would be especially awesome if it didn't need a mostly dedicated container and could drop in as a subfolder of an existing site (with minimal resource requirements).
- sytse 11y agoI'm glad to hear my answer was helpful. Saml support should be pretty good, it was contributed by CERN and they use it in production. Please see http://doc.gitlab.com/ce/integration/saml.html http://doc.gitlab.com/ce/integration/saml.html for documentation. If you encounter a bug please create an issue on https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-ce/issues https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-ce/issues We will try to reduce memory usage by something like 20% in the coming year. We have package for the Raspberry Pi 2 if you're into that. But GitLab will always be large due to its many features. For more details see https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-ce/blob/master/doc/install/requirements.md https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-ce/blob/master/doc/inst... If you want something with minimal requirements I recommend Gogs https://gogs.io/ https://gogs.io/
- girvo 11y agoIt's really nice to see you plug Gogs like that :) I'm a massive fan of both! They fill different niches I think. You're always super helpful here on HN, too, and I just wanted to let you know that I (and I'm sure others here) appreciate it!
- KurtMueller 11y agoWe use Gitlab here at The Ohio State University. We authenticate via Shibboleth. So far it's worked pretty well.
- matheweis 11y agoNice! Could you share some info? (Many variations of contact info in my profile). I run our Shibboleth IDP among other things, and I was told by the team that was looking at GitLab at the time that it was impossible to tie it in with the currently available SAML SP plugins. This was over a year ago, maybe things have improved...
- sytse 11y agoI think support for Shibboleth was added on Aug 28, 2014, but it has been improved since then, see http://doc.gitlab.com/ce/integration/shibboleth.html http://doc.gitlab.com/ce/integration/shibboleth.html
- kennydude 11y agoSAML and Shibboleth is awfully documented itself, so I'm not surprised at all.
- digbyloftus 11y agoShould probably go with "if" instead of "when" ;) Actual question, do you have much Australian based business and do you see yourselves needing account managers there (here) in the near future?
- sytse 11y agoI meant if indeed :) We just hired our first person for APAC sales, Michael Alessio https://about.gitlab.com/team/ https://about.gitlab.com/team/ We don't have any open positions now but you can always shoot him a mail. michael@ company domain, please include a reference to this comment
- digbyloftus 11y agoThanks! I'll be sure to do so.
- djhn 11y ago> IPO > preserve our culture, mission and goals. Pick one. Or is there a historic precedent I'm unaware of? On a serious note, the shift in the latter parameters can be smaller than in an acquisition, but to "preserve" would imply actively managing employee (and founder) expectations in the build-up to IPO.
- sytse 11y agoI agree that as a company grows the culture will always change, there is no standing still. But we're very active in spreading and prioritizing our values. For information about our values please see https://about.gitlab.com/handbook/#values https://about.gitlab.com/handbook/#values
- jsf666 11y agoWhat bullshit answer is this? It is pretty obvious you will have little to say compared to the majority shareholders
- sytse 11y agoMySQL reminded me of something that also should be in our stewardship promises so I added it https://gitlab.com/gitlab-com/www-gitlab-com/commit/c3e543a47d6a4a39b32107cf97b492f91ffb5110 https://gitlab.com/gitlab-com/www-gitlab-com/commit/c3e543a4...