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While this is disastrous, I still think Gitlab is the best thing happened to OSS. This could be taken as a rhetoric, but on a more actionable side, we must all

While this is disastrous, I still think Gitlab is the best thing happened to OSS. This could be taken as a rhetoric, but on a more actionable side, we must all learn from Gitlab's experience. Almost everybody experiences this issue, but very few come out clean.

FlorianRappl 10y ago
Couldn't agree more. Also transparency is key here. Everyone makes mistakes, but being open about it does not only let customers (and employees!) know what's going on, but also gives other professionals the ability to learn from it.
- neurotech1 10y ago
  There are two types of web application providers. Those who have already had database mishaps causing data loss, and those that WILL. No matter how good, or our how large and 'professional' the company is, mistakes can happen. Being open about it inspires confidence that they will improve in the future, instead of being quiet and having repeat incidents.
provost 10y ago
As someone who hasn't had the opportunity to use Gitlab, could you expand on why you "think Gitlab is the best thing happened to OSS"?
- mi100hael 10y ago
  It provides a lot of the same features as GitHub, only you can self-host for free, contribute to development, and all the other niceties of a free project. A lot of people (myself included, and OP I suspect) believe it's also a particularly good project because GitHub has too much market share and influence in the free software ecosystem for a for-profit company.
  - Vinnl 10y ago
    Note that GitLab is a for-profit company as well. It's just that it aligns better with the open source values.
    - djsumdog 10y ago
      ..and they have a commercial offering too. Unlike some other things I've seen, at least their commercial offering isn't crippled and mostly has things that specifically cater to enterprise customers (like Active Directory integration. The community edition still has basic LDAP).
      - mschuster91 10y ago
        > like Active Directory integration. The community edition still has basic LDAP I manage our company's GitLab instance. It's connected to our massive AD and it works just fine - the only thing I really miss is LDAP group creation and assignment. GitLab uses only the name and email attributes from LDAP/AD either way, and I think if I have some spare time I'll just write a hourly cronjob that manages groups and assignments using the GitLab API.
  - Girlang 10y ago
    Plus github has an agenda that has nothing to do with code, and excludes large segments of the public.
    - i336_ 10y ago
      Your comment was killed (I just vouched for it) because of your unsubstantiated claims. Can you give some concrete examples of why you think this way?
nicpottier 10y ago
I think you are confused. The best thing to happen to OSS is GitHub, not GitLab. GitLab is just a fast follower and likely wouldn't even exist without the former. I for one am happy to throw money GitHub's way for their role in so dramatically changing how we code.
- drvdevd 10y ago
  I pay for GitHub and can't deny their positive role in OSS, but I also use GitLab and will happily continue (and love that they have an OSS edition). I don't think it's a binary choice. Personally I will often adopt multiple pieces of software with redundant features because nuance often dictates the right tool for the job, and I enjoy being prepared for that.
  - nicpottier 10y ago
    Absolutely, but the parent was saying GitLab changed OSS, and though that may be true to some extent, it is a pittance compared to the imapct GitHub has made.
    - manquer 10y ago
      git itself is the real force behind the OSS impact. Github model while successful was merely replacing sourceforge and google code. People always had ways to host and share open source projects. Github enables centralization of code which is not really inline with philosophy of git being fully distributed . Gitlab with its OSS model and the ability to host your own git service makes is bit closer to that vision than Github is.
- Thaxll 10y ago
  You code differently using Git vs SVN? That's an interesting concept. It doesn't change the way you code it just changes the way we share code.
  - gowld 10y ago
    It doesn't change how I code. It changes how we code.
iurisilvio 10y ago
Exactly. today we're able to see a bad disaster recovery happening, but it happens all the time. I revised my backups and added some redundancy to it. Everyone knows how much backups are important and talk about it all the time, but I bet a lot of companies don't do it right. It is expensive, don't add real value (except when it does), etc. Today I added automated replication of backups from AWS to another cloud provider. Just in case... I did this becauase recently, a local brazilian cloud provider (ServerLoft) didn't paid his server (Equinix) and went offline forever. 16k companies went offline without time to recover anything there.
- Klathmon 10y ago
  As terrible as it is for GitLab, it's doing some good here as well. I'm using this as a great example of a reason to bump up some of the fixes to some of our backups and replication issues up the priority list. And it's much easier to sell to some of the "higher ups" when you can point at a concrete example of how badly a misstep here can hurt. I'm floored with their honesty and openness, I can honestly say I wouldn't be able to put this out there like they have... But i'm really glad they are doing it, and I'm really happy at the outpouring of support they are getting for it from people like 2ndQuadrant.
kakwa_ 10y ago
Well, even if their transparency in failure is admirable, I'm not completely surprised. Just running an apt-get install gitlab gives me around ~350 dependencies. In those dependencies, I see python, ruby, nodejs, redis, postgres. With a little Java, and a little Go, plus some admin scripts written in Perl, the picture would be mostly complete... I may be a little harsh, but when I see a piece of software with so much complexity in it that it requires 3 stacks, I'm not completely convinced it's a well conceived piece of software. Having 5 backup systems, with none of them working properly kind of falls in the same category.
- dman 10y ago
  I would be surprised if most startups arent doing something similar behind the scenes.
  - dsacco 10y ago
    In my experience of working closely with about 100 startups, most do not have that complex a tech stack. What I see nowadays is basically: [Python|Ruby|JavaScript] backend + [JavaScript] frontend + [Postgres|Mongo] database + redis + [AWS|GCP] hosting. Rarely, I see Java or Go instead for the backend. I cannot recall the last time I saw more than three languages in production for anything nontrivial. I've seen companies significantly larger subsisting on one language for backend (even in microservice architecture!) and one language for frontend. That's not to say there is no sophistication, just that the number of actual technologies in play is slimmer. This isn't a comment on GitLab's utility or stability, of course. I haven't worked with them in this context, and I'm not a user. I'm just pointing out that, assuming those dependencies are all for GitLab and not e.g. git itself, that is quite a stack to maintain. I don't know if we can extrapolate that to a systemic issue with GitLab that caused a data loss incident, though. That seems uncharitable.
- freehunter 10y ago
  That's what I thought when I read the report earlier today. A system with that much complexity is doomed to failure eventually. I can understand "right tool for the job" but at some point it should all come together. An MVP can be hacked together from bits and bobs, but when it becomes a business it should be refactored to reduce complexity where possible. Trying to maintain five seperate backup solutions, let alone trying to restore from all five of them, sounds like my worst nightmare. Trying to restore from one backup is often hard enough by itself.
tigershark 10y ago
seriously? almost everybody has FIVE different backups system and not one of them works? I don't know where you work, but in my job monitoring everything is essential. And a couple of times per year we do a disaster recovery test. Something like this is completely and totally unacceptable. It means that they never tested any backup.

FlorianRappl 10y ago

Couldn't agree more. Also transparency is key here. Everyone makes mistakes, but being open about it does not only let customers (and employees!) know what's going on, but also gives other professionals the ability to learn from it.

neurotech1 10y ago
There are two types of web application providers. Those who have already had database mishaps causing data loss, and those that WILL. No matter how good, or our how large and 'professional' the company is, mistakes can happen. Being open about it inspires confidence that they will improve in the future, instead of being quiet and having repeat incidents.

provost 10y ago

As someone who hasn't had the opportunity to use Gitlab, could you expand on why you "think Gitlab is the best thing happened to OSS"?

mi100hael 10y ago
It provides a lot of the same features as GitHub, only you can self-host for free, contribute to development, and all the other niceties of a free project. A lot of people (myself included, and OP I suspect) believe it's also a particularly good project because GitHub has too much market share and influence in the free software ecosystem for a for-profit company.
- Vinnl 10y ago
  Note that GitLab is a for-profit company as well. It's just that it aligns better with the open source values.
  - djsumdog 10y ago
    ..and they have a commercial offering too. Unlike some other things I've seen, at least their commercial offering isn't crippled and mostly has things that specifically cater to enterprise customers (like Active Directory integration. The community edition still has basic LDAP).
    - mschuster91 10y ago
      > like Active Directory integration. The community edition still has basic LDAP I manage our company's GitLab instance. It's connected to our massive AD and it works just fine - the only thing I really miss is LDAP group creation and assignment. GitLab uses only the name and email attributes from LDAP/AD either way, and I think if I have some spare time I'll just write a hourly cronjob that manages groups and assignments using the GitLab API.
- Girlang 10y ago
  Plus github has an agenda that has nothing to do with code, and excludes large segments of the public.
  - i336_ 10y ago
    Your comment was killed (I just vouched for it) because of your unsubstantiated claims. Can you give some concrete examples of why you think this way?

nicpottier 10y ago

I think you are confused. The best thing to happen to OSS is GitHub, not GitLab. GitLab is just a fast follower and likely wouldn't even exist without the former. I for one am happy to throw money GitHub's way for their role in so dramatically changing how we code.

drvdevd 10y ago
I pay for GitHub and can't deny their positive role in OSS, but I also use GitLab and will happily continue (and love that they have an OSS edition). I don't think it's a binary choice. Personally I will often adopt multiple pieces of software with redundant features because nuance often dictates the right tool for the job, and I enjoy being prepared for that.
- nicpottier 10y ago
  Absolutely, but the parent was saying GitLab changed OSS, and though that may be true to some extent, it is a pittance compared to the imapct GitHub has made.
  - manquer 10y ago
    git itself is the real force behind the OSS impact. Github model while successful was merely replacing sourceforge and google code. People always had ways to host and share open source projects. Github enables centralization of code which is not really inline with philosophy of git being fully distributed . Gitlab with its OSS model and the ability to host your own git service makes is bit closer to that vision than Github is.
Thaxll 10y ago
You code differently using Git vs SVN? That's an interesting concept. It doesn't change the way you code it just changes the way we share code.
- gowld 10y ago
  It doesn't change how I code. It changes how we code.

iurisilvio 10y ago

Exactly. today we're able to see a bad disaster recovery happening, but it happens all the time. I revised my backups and added some redundancy to it. Everyone knows how much backups are important and talk about it all the time, but I bet a lot of companies don't do it right. It is expensive, don't add real value (except when it does), etc. Today I added automated replication of backups from AWS to another cloud provider. Just in case... I did this becauase recently, a local brazilian cloud provider (ServerLoft) didn't paid his server (Equinix) and went offline forever. 16k companies went offline without time to recover anything there.

Klathmon 10y ago
As terrible as it is for GitLab, it's doing some good here as well. I'm using this as a great example of a reason to bump up some of the fixes to some of our backups and replication issues up the priority list. And it's much easier to sell to some of the "higher ups" when you can point at a concrete example of how badly a misstep here can hurt. I'm floored with their honesty and openness, I can honestly say I wouldn't be able to put this out there like they have... But i'm really glad they are doing it, and I'm really happy at the outpouring of support they are getting for it from people like 2ndQuadrant.

kakwa_ 10y ago

Well, even if their transparency in failure is admirable, I'm not completely surprised. Just running an apt-get install gitlab gives me around ~350 dependencies. In those dependencies, I see python, ruby, nodejs, redis, postgres. With a little Java, and a little Go, plus some admin scripts written in Perl, the picture would be mostly complete... I may be a little harsh, but when I see a piece of software with so much complexity in it that it requires 3 stacks, I'm not completely convinced it's a well conceived piece of software. Having 5 backup systems, with none of them working properly kind of falls in the same category.

dman 10y ago
I would be surprised if most startups arent doing something similar behind the scenes.
- dsacco 10y ago
  In my experience of working closely with about 100 startups, most do not have that complex a tech stack. What I see nowadays is basically: [Python|Ruby|JavaScript] backend + [JavaScript] frontend + [Postgres|Mongo] database + redis + [AWS|GCP] hosting. Rarely, I see Java or Go instead for the backend. I cannot recall the last time I saw more than three languages in production for anything nontrivial. I've seen companies significantly larger subsisting on one language for backend (even in microservice architecture!) and one language for frontend. That's not to say there is no sophistication, just that the number of actual technologies in play is slimmer. This isn't a comment on GitLab's utility or stability, of course. I haven't worked with them in this context, and I'm not a user. I'm just pointing out that, assuming those dependencies are all for GitLab and not e.g. git itself, that is quite a stack to maintain. I don't know if we can extrapolate that to a systemic issue with GitLab that caused a data loss incident, though. That seems uncharitable.
freehunter 10y ago
That's what I thought when I read the report earlier today. A system with that much complexity is doomed to failure eventually. I can understand "right tool for the job" but at some point it should all come together. An MVP can be hacked together from bits and bobs, but when it becomes a business it should be refactored to reduce complexity where possible. Trying to maintain five seperate backup solutions, let alone trying to restore from all five of them, sounds like my worst nightmare. Trying to restore from one backup is often hard enough by itself.

tigershark 10y ago

seriously? almost everybody has FIVE different backups system and not one of them works? I don't know where you work, but in my job monitoring everything is essential. And a couple of times per year we do a disaster recovery test. Something like this is completely and totally unacceptable. It means that they never tested any backup.