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In 2012 I did a show HN for GitLab.com https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4428278 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4428278 It didn't trend so I started ba

by sytse 10y ago

In 2012 I did a show HN for GitLab.com https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4428278 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=4428278 It didn't trend so I started baking pancakes. When I checked my phone I saw that it got on the HN homepage and comments were flooding in. I asked my then girlfriend (now wife) to take over the baking and started responding. I ended up eating the pancakes behind my computer :) Hundreds of people signed up for the beta. In 2013 the author of GitLab, Dmitriy, tweeted "I want to work on GitLab full time" and I hired him. A year later we incorporated and applied for YC. In March of 2015 we graduated from YC with 9 people on our team. Now we are 93 people in 28 countries https://about.gitlab.com/team/ https://about.gitlab.com/team/ with more than 100,000 organizations running GitLab. Over 1200 people contributed to the project http://contributors.gitlab.com/ http://contributors.gitlab.com/ I owe the greatest adventure in my life to Hacker News and its users, thanks everyone!

fencepost 10y ago
I assume you're talking about gitlab.io, which I suspect as part of your incorporation, hiring of Dmitriy, etc. is now gitlab.com. Nice job!
- sytse 10y ago
  Indeed, it started as GitLab.io and I later aquired the .com and .org domain names. In the beginning we ran GitLab.org for the open source project and GitLab.com for the company and the SaaS. We later consolidated everything under GitLab.org
  - erlend_sh 10y ago
    Could you expand a bit on why you opted to consolidate the two? We have to make the exact same decision for discourse.org
    - sytse 10y ago
      Of course, I would love to elaborate. We found that there was a lot of duplication between .com and .org. Same news (tweets, blog posts), overlapping email lists, overlapping members, etc. That duplication lead to duplicate effort, confusion, people missing news or comments on news, and bad SEO. The reason for having two sites in the first place was to separate the open source project from the commercial organization. In practise the same people controlled both sides. It felt like a Potemkin village https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Potemkin_village https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Potemkin_village We realized that it doesn't help to present yourself as an independent project when you are not. What matters is that the commercial organization is a good steward of the open source project. So we detailed how we want to do that https://about.gitlab.com/about/#stewardship https://about.gitlab.com/about/#stewardship and instituted a core team https://about.gitlab.com/core-team/ https://about.gitlab.com/core-team/ At times situations will come up that will allow you to show your true colors. For us it was the VLC people asking to open source a feature on HN and our competitor Perforce adopting GitLab. How you handle those situations is far more important than having multiple domain names. I recommend that you consolidate everything under one website but you open up your company. See https://about.gitlab.com/handbook/ https://about.gitlab.com/handbook/ for inspiration.
      - e12e 10y ago
        > It felt like a Potemkin village https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Potemkin_village https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Potemkin_village Haha, you just made me realize that "The City and the City" by China Miéville[1] could be used as a metaphor for such artificially divided organizations like the one you had (and many have - for better or worse reasons). [1] http://amzn.to/29MWd3v http://amzn.to/29MWd3v [amazon affiliate link - just an experiment] https://www.amazon.com/City-China-Mi-ville-ebook/dp/B003E2UQLO/ https://www.amazon.com/City-China-Mi-ville-ebook/dp/B003E2UQ... [Non-affilate link - to be a little more courteous ;-) ]
vsviridov 10y ago
We love GitLab :) I wish you guys add private NPM repos :)
- sytse 10y ago
  We love you too :) Please see https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-ce/issues/19095 https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-ce/issues/19095 for the package server, right now that is still far away.

by sytse 10y ago

fencepost 10y ago

I assume you're talking about gitlab.io, which I suspect as part of your incorporation, hiring of Dmitriy, etc. is now gitlab.com. Nice job!

sytse 10y ago
Indeed, it started as GitLab.io and I later aquired the .com and .org domain names. In the beginning we ran GitLab.org for the open source project and GitLab.com for the company and the SaaS. We later consolidated everything under GitLab.org
- erlend_sh 10y ago
  Could you expand a bit on why you opted to consolidate the two? We have to make the exact same decision for discourse.org
  - sytse 10y ago
    Of course, I would love to elaborate. We found that there was a lot of duplication between .com and .org. Same news (tweets, blog posts), overlapping email lists, overlapping members, etc. That duplication lead to duplicate effort, confusion, people missing news or comments on news, and bad SEO. The reason for having two sites in the first place was to separate the open source project from the commercial organization. In practise the same people controlled both sides. It felt like a Potemkin village https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Potemkin_village https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Potemkin_village We realized that it doesn't help to present yourself as an independent project when you are not. What matters is that the commercial organization is a good steward of the open source project. So we detailed how we want to do that https://about.gitlab.com/about/#stewardship https://about.gitlab.com/about/#stewardship and instituted a core team https://about.gitlab.com/core-team/ https://about.gitlab.com/core-team/ At times situations will come up that will allow you to show your true colors. For us it was the VLC people asking to open source a feature on HN and our competitor Perforce adopting GitLab. How you handle those situations is far more important than having multiple domain names. I recommend that you consolidate everything under one website but you open up your company. See https://about.gitlab.com/handbook/ https://about.gitlab.com/handbook/ for inspiration.
    - e12e 10y ago
      > It felt like a Potemkin village https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Potemkin_village https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Potemkin_village Haha, you just made me realize that "The City and the City" by China Miéville[1] could be used as a metaphor for such artificially divided organizations like the one you had (and many have - for better or worse reasons). [1] http://amzn.to/29MWd3v http://amzn.to/29MWd3v [amazon affiliate link - just an experiment] https://www.amazon.com/City-China-Mi-ville-ebook/dp/B003E2UQLO/ https://www.amazon.com/City-China-Mi-ville-ebook/dp/B003E2UQ... [Non-affilate link - to be a little more courteous ;-) ]

vsviridov 10y ago

We love GitLab :) I wish you guys add private NPM repos :)

sytse 10y ago
We love you too :) Please see https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-ce/issues/19095 https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-ce/issues/19095 for the package server, right now that is still far away.