14 ms·

For people wondering what makes GitLab any different, the answer is that GitLab is an open source product at its core. This means that anybody can run their own

For people wondering what makes GitLab any different, the answer is that GitLab is an open source product at its core. This means that anybody can run their own instance. If the company ends up moving in a direction that the community isn’t comfortable with, then it’s always possible to fork it. There’s also a proposal https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-ee/issues/4517 https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-ee/issues/4517 to support federation between GitLab instances. With this approach there wouldn’t even be a need for a single central hub. One of the main advantages of Git is that it’s a decentralized system, and it’s somewhat ironic that GitHub constitutes a single point of failure. In theory this could work similarly to the way Mastodon works currently. Individuals and organizations could setup GitLab servers that would federate between each other. This could allow searching for repos across the federation, tagging issues across projects on different instances, and potentially fail over if instances mirror content. With this approach you wouldn’t be relying on a single provider to host everybody’s projects in one place.

kidsil 8y ago
Federation would be amazing
s2g 8y ago
It doesn't matter when people are wanting the community and aren't wanting to host their own solution.
- deleted 8y ago
  [deleted]
- inimino 8y ago
  The whole point is that some people do want the control that comes with self-hosting, and GitHub does not provide a way to do that.
  - reificator 8y ago
    > The whole point is that some people do want the control that comes with self-hosting, and GitHub does not provide a way to do that. But they do though. It might be significantly more expensive than GitLab and also only sold in packs of 10 user licenses and also not allowed to be run in a public-facing capacity. But they definitely do have a self-hosted option. https://enterprise.github.com/ https://enterprise.github.com/
  - masukomi 8y ago
    actually unless something recently changed, GitHub does, it's the enterprise edition and last time i checked it was like $10k a year. Yes, not reasonable for most people but it _is_ an option for people that want the control that comes with self hosting. Its feature set is also always lagging behind normal GitHub. The place i work used to use it (don't ask why). I think it's per-seat licenses but i remember it working out to ~$10k for us and we've got < 40 devs.
  - tedunangst 8y ago
    If they want self hosting, why are they importing to gitlab.com?
    - reificator 8y ago
      Easier and faster to evaluate gitlab.com and determine if they like the product or not before setting up a self-hosted version. In fact I have been literally considering migrating our internal GoGS install to GitLab for the last week or two. The end of my day on Friday was downloading Gitlab and figuring out where to host an evaluation install. Migrating my personal account over from Github to GitLab.com is a good chance to get some hands on time. Plus I can consolidate my personal CI setups at the same time, and I don't have to pay monthly for private repos. Win-Win-Win. PS: Always interested when your content comes up in my RSS reader. I do wish it was easier to share links without the unsafe content warning though. :P
- jdboyd 8y ago
  If you don't want to host your own solution, then just use GitLab's hosted service. It is free.
api 8y ago
Gogs is another great foss git alternative, and easier to run for small sites. We use it at ZeroTier.
- Retr0spectrum 8y ago
  I've also heard about gitea, which is apparently a fork of Gogs with the only difference being more maintainers. Does anyone know of any more substantial differences? Which should I choose?
  - ausjke 8y ago
    gogs was more of a one-person-in-command project, not sure its status now, gitea is more of a team work. I use gitea, works great all around, perfect for small to middle-size needs, totally resource light when you self host,a $5 VPS will serve well, or a small local VM
  - frfl 8y ago
    I've setup gitea for myself. Both a fairly similar, just that gitea doesn't have a single point of failure. Gitea has a feature comparison chat on their site[1] if you wish to compare the two directly. The fork arose from the single maintainer not working to give some control to the community. [1]: https://docs.gitea.io/en-us/comparison/ https://docs.gitea.io/en-us/comparison/
    - dspillett 8y ago
      That is a pleasantly honest comparison table, even listing the features they don't (at least currently) have. A refreshing change not to need a third party assessment for that.
  - sdesol 8y ago
    You can see when Gitea forked from Gogs at https://public.gitsense.com/insight/github?r=gogs/gogs::go-gitea/gitea#b%3Dgithub%3Ago-gitea%2Fgitea%3Amaster%3A%3Agithub%3Agogs%2Fgogs%3Adevelop%26q%3Dwindow%3A700%26t%3Dcommits https://public.gitsense.com/insight/github?r=gogs/gogs::go-g... The following shows how active the two products are: https://public.gitsense.com/insight/github?r=gogs/gogs::go-gitea/gitea#b%3Dgithub%3Ago-gitea%2Fgitea%3Amaster%3A%3Agithub%3Agogs%2Fgogs%3Adevelop%26q%3Dupdated%3A0..14%5E_%5Ecreated%3A0..90%26p%3Dpom https://public.gitsense.com/insight/github?r=gogs/gogs::go-g...
uponbe 8y ago
And it’s good too that sexism is not one of the core values of gitlab.
rqs 8y ago
Yes yes yes, federation is needed. People on GitHub is not just to sharing codes, but also to get in touch with each others. GitHub succeed because it's not only just a free online Git repo services, but also a developer + user community where you can put your code on, share it, and 'earn' stars & forks as feedback. And stars + forks can help you stand out in a job interview and many other occasions. Bitbucket is another Git repo service, but it sort of failed to build it's community. Result? It received less attentions compare GitHub. So, while GitLab is also trying to be 'yet-another' Git repo + you can host it on your own, the benefits of become community can't be ignored. And federation can help that by connecting all the GitLab instances together to form a bigger and global community. Even better, the federation protocol itself can be an open-sourced public standard, so all the other Git repo software can implement that in their product. The potential is huge.
- giancarlostoro 8y ago
  Unlike GitHub though Atlassian isn't just working on GitHub but many other tools for developers. This includes JIRA, Confluence and so on. GitHub is mostly focused on repositories. This is why devs had to write a letter to GitHub to tell them hey can you guys seriously work on the Issues system? With the resources of Microsoft it will not surprise me to see a much more open and capable GitHub.
  - marcus_holmes 8y ago
    Except that Atlassian aren't really working on Bitbucket any more. There's lots of issues with the system that are not being resolved. Last time I had a problem with Bitbucket I found they had known about it for months and done nothing, with no plan to do anything either. But then, as I understand it, Bitbucket was an acquisition rather than a brainchild of the Atlassian team, so you can expect a certain amount of neglect. An omen for github?
    - seanjregan 8y ago
      Atlassian has a lot of people working hard on Bitbucket. They shipped pipelines, deployments, code aware search, new UI, git lfs, embedded Trello and a lot more while improving uptime and performance, getting soc2 type 2 certified and a massive amount of other stuff.
jameslk 8y ago
That sounds like something just waiting for copyright abuse and its ensuing enforcement hell. "This GitLab instance has been shut down permanently by the FBI and ICE"
huntie 8y ago
Yes, federation would be great for git. I just hope that an open protocol is designed rather than something GitLab specifc. GitLab takes a lot of resources to self-host.
- giancarlostoro 8y ago
  Would be nice if Microsoft gets onboard for such a protocol. Especially once they own GitHub. Would also be funny if Microsoft Open Sources GitHub much to everyone's surprise.
- Qwertie 8y ago
  The current talks are about basing it on ActivityPub which is an open spec but of course it would only work on software which supports it.
veidr 8y ago
GitLab is a lot like Firefox, or "Linux on the desktop" in that way. It's what a lot of us want to use, but the less-open but more-polished option has always seemed the more pragmatic choice. But that can change. Recently (just as most of the world has apparently moved on from desktop computing, haha) Linux is pretty much fine for the traditional desktop computing. I have current Mac, Windows, and Ubuttnu on my desk, and they are essentially interchangeable except for a few special-case purposes (say, Final Cut video editing, or opening one of those weird wonky Excel sheets that only open on Windows). Firefox, too, is suddenly performant and I've switched to it as my main browser (for default website use) — something absolutely, utterly unimaginable two years ago. I hope that GitLab is reaching the same kind of transition point. I've heard horror stories from people that used it 2-3 years ago and are happy to be back on GitHub. But I don't hear much recent grumbling. I moved a toy project to it and it seems nice. As fast as GitHub for me (though I am in Japan, and GitHub is slow in Japan). More features. A nice, sort of adult/professional aesthetic. And — yay! — the open source core it's always had. I might be wrong, since I haven't used it for reals, but it looks like they might have hit that critical usability threshold? Open source and worse isn't a very compelling sales pitch. But an open source tool that is broadly equivalent to a closed source one is generally more attractive, especially when you're talking about services that will be used as part of your core infrastructure.
- koboll 8y ago
  >GitLab is a lot like Firefox, or "Linux on the desktop" in that way. It's what a lot of us want to use, but the less-open but more-polished option has always seemed the more pragmatic choice. But that can change. I wonder if this move by GitHub is motivated by them seeing this writing on the wall.
  - lawnchair_larry 8y ago
    No, it’s motivated by 5 billion dollars (or whatever the real number is). That’s why people funded GitHub.
    - himom 8y ago
_pferreir_ 8y ago
I think it's important to clarify that even though GitLab's core is open source, its own business model is built on the idea of an enterprise version that includes proprietary code. Many useful "advanced" features, such as "squash and merge" are only included in the EE.
- Vinnl 8y ago
  Interestingly, exactly the feature you mentioned is just being open sourced due to high community demand and it being free in its competitors: https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-ce/issues/34591#note_57200169 https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-ce/issues/34591#note_57...
  - _pferreir_ 8y ago
    I based myself on what is available on their "features" page: https://about.gitlab.com/features/ https://about.gitlab.com/features/ In any case, this highlights once again the issue: the community will have to put enough pressure on the parent company to release certain improvements as Open Source. And their interests are most likely not aligned.
    - philipwhiuk 8y ago
      If they don't it can always be forked though. I think that's why they eased up - they realised that GNOME would just fork GitLab if they didn't release this issue. GNOME already planned to self-host and have enough of a community to maintain a close fork.
      - marcinkuzminski 8y ago
        I think the bigger picture here is code hosting. You cannot fork that, and TBH the value of moving from Github to gitlab.com is hosting alternative which is not really open-source.
    - Vinnl 8y ago
      But doesn't the fact that the feature you mentioned has actually been made open sourced, that those business models might well be aligned? IIRC, GitLab's open sourcing policy is something along the lines of "if it's useful to small or open source projects, we open source it, whereas if it's primarily useful to large enterprises with >100 employees, it goes into enterprise edition". That sounds like a pretty viable way to both have a useful open source project and raise the money required to build and maintain it.
vidarh 8y ago
For me, the one thing keeping me using Github for most of my public projects have so far been discoverability. I use Gitlab for all of my private projects. To the extent that I think really the only thing I'd want to see to not need Github any more would be some sort of federated social/discoverability/search layer similar to what you're describing.
mtgx 8y ago
I wish it was Gogs that became this popular instead. Spreading Java and Oracle's influence even further is going to be a bad idea for the future.
- philipwhiuk 8y ago
  Is GitLab Java based? How does Oracle feature in this?
  - jobvandervoort 8y ago
    GitLab is built on Ruby on Rails and a sprinkle of Go. We have no relation to Oracle.
bromuro 8y ago
> For people wondering what makes GitLab any different nobody wonders that, as every week there’s a post on HN prising gitlab.
neves 8y ago
How is GitLab funded? How real is their commitment to open source?
- quadrangle 8y ago
  GitLab has taken VC money too. Including from a Google-connected investment group. There's no guarantee they won't be bought out etc. some day. They too are looking for a big exit for investors. Their commitment to free/libre/open values is not 100% but is far more than GitHub. The fully-FLO CE part is truly a completely usable product. They have zero proprietary client-side JavaScript. They publish the source for their proprietary stuff (last I checked anyway) but have a restricted license. And they've actively worked with the FSF and volunteers to meet the GNU ethical repo criteria https://www.gnu.org/software/repo-criteria-evaluation.html https://www.gnu.org/software/repo-criteria-evaluation.html So, GitLab is not quite Mozilla (which is itself not quite Wikimedia or GNU level dedication). But GitLab is still a standout in FLO-commitment compared to the mediocre norm.

kidsil 8y ago

Federation would be amazing

s2g 8y ago

It doesn't matter when people are wanting the community and aren't wanting to host their own solution.

deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
inimino 8y ago
The whole point is that some people do want the control that comes with self-hosting, and GitHub does not provide a way to do that.
- reificator 8y ago
  > The whole point is that some people do want the control that comes with self-hosting, and GitHub does not provide a way to do that. But they do though. It might be significantly more expensive than GitLab and also only sold in packs of 10 user licenses and also not allowed to be run in a public-facing capacity. But they definitely do have a self-hosted option. https://enterprise.github.com/ https://enterprise.github.com/
- masukomi 8y ago
  actually unless something recently changed, GitHub does, it's the enterprise edition and last time i checked it was like $10k a year. Yes, not reasonable for most people but it _is_ an option for people that want the control that comes with self hosting. Its feature set is also always lagging behind normal GitHub. The place i work used to use it (don't ask why). I think it's per-seat licenses but i remember it working out to ~$10k for us and we've got < 40 devs.
- tedunangst 8y ago
  If they want self hosting, why are they importing to gitlab.com?
  - reificator 8y ago
    Easier and faster to evaluate gitlab.com and determine if they like the product or not before setting up a self-hosted version. In fact I have been literally considering migrating our internal GoGS install to GitLab for the last week or two. The end of my day on Friday was downloading Gitlab and figuring out where to host an evaluation install. Migrating my personal account over from Github to GitLab.com is a good chance to get some hands on time. Plus I can consolidate my personal CI setups at the same time, and I don't have to pay monthly for private repos. Win-Win-Win. PS: Always interested when your content comes up in my RSS reader. I do wish it was easier to share links without the unsafe content warning though. :P
jdboyd 8y ago
If you don't want to host your own solution, then just use GitLab's hosted service. It is free.

api 8y ago

Gogs is another great foss git alternative, and easier to run for small sites. We use it at ZeroTier.

Retr0spectrum 8y ago
I've also heard about gitea, which is apparently a fork of Gogs with the only difference being more maintainers. Does anyone know of any more substantial differences? Which should I choose?
- ausjke 8y ago
  gogs was more of a one-person-in-command project, not sure its status now, gitea is more of a team work. I use gitea, works great all around, perfect for small to middle-size needs, totally resource light when you self host,a $5 VPS will serve well, or a small local VM
- frfl 8y ago
  I've setup gitea for myself. Both a fairly similar, just that gitea doesn't have a single point of failure. Gitea has a feature comparison chat on their site[1] if you wish to compare the two directly. The fork arose from the single maintainer not working to give some control to the community. [1]: https://docs.gitea.io/en-us/comparison/ https://docs.gitea.io/en-us/comparison/
  - dspillett 8y ago
    That is a pleasantly honest comparison table, even listing the features they don't (at least currently) have. A refreshing change not to need a third party assessment for that.
- sdesol 8y ago
  You can see when Gitea forked from Gogs at https://public.gitsense.com/insight/github?r=gogs/gogs::go-gitea/gitea#b%3Dgithub%3Ago-gitea%2Fgitea%3Amaster%3A%3Agithub%3Agogs%2Fgogs%3Adevelop%26q%3Dwindow%3A700%26t%3Dcommits https://public.gitsense.com/insight/github?r=gogs/gogs::go-g... The following shows how active the two products are: https://public.gitsense.com/insight/github?r=gogs/gogs::go-gitea/gitea#b%3Dgithub%3Ago-gitea%2Fgitea%3Amaster%3A%3Agithub%3Agogs%2Fgogs%3Adevelop%26q%3Dupdated%3A0..14%5E_%5Ecreated%3A0..90%26p%3Dpom https://public.gitsense.com/insight/github?r=gogs/gogs::go-g...

uponbe 8y ago

And it’s good too that sexism is not one of the core values of gitlab.

rqs 8y ago

Yes yes yes, federation is needed. People on GitHub is not just to sharing codes, but also to get in touch with each others. GitHub succeed because it's not only just a free online Git repo services, but also a developer + user community where you can put your code on, share it, and 'earn' stars & forks as feedback. And stars + forks can help you stand out in a job interview and many other occasions. Bitbucket is another Git repo service, but it sort of failed to build it's community. Result? It received less attentions compare GitHub. So, while GitLab is also trying to be 'yet-another' Git repo + you can host it on your own, the benefits of become community can't be ignored. And federation can help that by connecting all the GitLab instances together to form a bigger and global community. Even better, the federation protocol itself can be an open-sourced public standard, so all the other Git repo software can implement that in their product. The potential is huge.

giancarlostoro 8y ago
Unlike GitHub though Atlassian isn't just working on GitHub but many other tools for developers. This includes JIRA, Confluence and so on. GitHub is mostly focused on repositories. This is why devs had to write a letter to GitHub to tell them hey can you guys seriously work on the Issues system? With the resources of Microsoft it will not surprise me to see a much more open and capable GitHub.
- marcus_holmes 8y ago
  Except that Atlassian aren't really working on Bitbucket any more. There's lots of issues with the system that are not being resolved. Last time I had a problem with Bitbucket I found they had known about it for months and done nothing, with no plan to do anything either. But then, as I understand it, Bitbucket was an acquisition rather than a brainchild of the Atlassian team, so you can expect a certain amount of neglect. An omen for github?
  - seanjregan 8y ago
    Atlassian has a lot of people working hard on Bitbucket. They shipped pipelines, deployments, code aware search, new UI, git lfs, embedded Trello and a lot more while improving uptime and performance, getting soc2 type 2 certified and a massive amount of other stuff.

jameslk 8y ago

That sounds like something just waiting for copyright abuse and its ensuing enforcement hell. "This GitLab instance has been shut down permanently by the FBI and ICE"

huntie 8y ago

Yes, federation would be great for git. I just hope that an open protocol is designed rather than something GitLab specifc. GitLab takes a lot of resources to self-host.

giancarlostoro 8y ago
Would be nice if Microsoft gets onboard for such a protocol. Especially once they own GitHub. Would also be funny if Microsoft Open Sources GitHub much to everyone's surprise.
Qwertie 8y ago
The current talks are about basing it on ActivityPub which is an open spec but of course it would only work on software which supports it.

veidr 8y ago

GitLab is a lot like Firefox, or "Linux on the desktop" in that way. It's what a lot of us want to use, but the less-open but more-polished option has always seemed the more pragmatic choice. But that can change. Recently (just as most of the world has apparently moved on from desktop computing, haha) Linux is pretty much fine for the traditional desktop computing. I have current Mac, Windows, and Ubuttnu on my desk, and they are essentially interchangeable except for a few special-case purposes (say, Final Cut video editing, or opening one of those weird wonky Excel sheets that only open on Windows). Firefox, too, is suddenly performant and I've switched to it as my main browser (for default website use) — something absolutely, utterly unimaginable two years ago. I hope that GitLab is reaching the same kind of transition point. I've heard horror stories from people that used it 2-3 years ago and are happy to be back on GitHub. But I don't hear much recent grumbling. I moved a toy project to it and it seems nice. As fast as GitHub for me (though I am in Japan, and GitHub is slow in Japan). More features. A nice, sort of adult/professional aesthetic. And — yay! — the open source core it's always had. I might be wrong, since I haven't used it for reals, but it looks like they might have hit that critical usability threshold? Open source and worse isn't a very compelling sales pitch. But an open source tool that is broadly equivalent to a closed source one is generally more attractive, especially when you're talking about services that will be used as part of your core infrastructure.

koboll 8y ago
>GitLab is a lot like Firefox, or "Linux on the desktop" in that way. It's what a lot of us want to use, but the less-open but more-polished option has always seemed the more pragmatic choice. But that can change. I wonder if this move by GitHub is motivated by them seeing this writing on the wall.
- lawnchair_larry 8y ago
  No, it’s motivated by 5 billion dollars (or whatever the real number is). That’s why people funded GitHub.
  - himom 8y ago

_pferreir_ 8y ago

I think it's important to clarify that even though GitLab's core is open source, its own business model is built on the idea of an enterprise version that includes proprietary code. Many useful "advanced" features, such as "squash and merge" are only included in the EE.

Vinnl 8y ago
Interestingly, exactly the feature you mentioned is just being open sourced due to high community demand and it being free in its competitors: https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-ce/issues/34591#note_57200169 https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-ce/issues/34591#note_57...
- _pferreir_ 8y ago
  I based myself on what is available on their "features" page: https://about.gitlab.com/features/ https://about.gitlab.com/features/ In any case, this highlights once again the issue: the community will have to put enough pressure on the parent company to release certain improvements as Open Source. And their interests are most likely not aligned.
  - philipwhiuk 8y ago
    If they don't it can always be forked though. I think that's why they eased up - they realised that GNOME would just fork GitLab if they didn't release this issue. GNOME already planned to self-host and have enough of a community to maintain a close fork.
    - marcinkuzminski 8y ago
      I think the bigger picture here is code hosting. You cannot fork that, and TBH the value of moving from Github to gitlab.com is hosting alternative which is not really open-source.
  - Vinnl 8y ago
    But doesn't the fact that the feature you mentioned has actually been made open sourced, that those business models might well be aligned? IIRC, GitLab's open sourcing policy is something along the lines of "if it's useful to small or open source projects, we open source it, whereas if it's primarily useful to large enterprises with >100 employees, it goes into enterprise edition". That sounds like a pretty viable way to both have a useful open source project and raise the money required to build and maintain it.

vidarh 8y ago

For me, the one thing keeping me using Github for most of my public projects have so far been discoverability. I use Gitlab for all of my private projects. To the extent that I think really the only thing I'd want to see to not need Github any more would be some sort of federated social/discoverability/search layer similar to what you're describing.

mtgx 8y ago

I wish it was Gogs that became this popular instead. Spreading Java and Oracle's influence even further is going to be a bad idea for the future.

philipwhiuk 8y ago
Is GitLab Java based? How does Oracle feature in this?
- jobvandervoort 8y ago
  GitLab is built on Ruby on Rails and a sprinkle of Go. We have no relation to Oracle.

bromuro 8y ago

> For people wondering what makes GitLab any different nobody wonders that, as every week there’s a post on HN prising gitlab.

neves 8y ago

How is GitLab funded? How real is their commitment to open source?

quadrangle 8y ago
GitLab has taken VC money too. Including from a Google-connected investment group. There's no guarantee they won't be bought out etc. some day. They too are looking for a big exit for investors. Their commitment to free/libre/open values is not 100% but is far more than GitHub. The fully-FLO CE part is truly a completely usable product. They have zero proprietary client-side JavaScript. They publish the source for their proprietary stuff (last I checked anyway) but have a restricted license. And they've actively worked with the FSF and volunteers to meet the GNU ethical repo criteria https://www.gnu.org/software/repo-criteria-evaluation.html https://www.gnu.org/software/repo-criteria-evaluation.html So, GitLab is not quite Mozilla (which is itself not quite Wikimedia or GNU level dedication). But GitLab is still a standout in FLO-commitment compared to the mediocre norm.