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(I promise this will turn out favorable for gitlab) When gitlab first came out, I found the amount of shameful copying of github distasteful. I thought, man th

by atonse 8y ago

(I promise this will turn out favorable for gitlab) When gitlab first came out, I found the amount of shameful copying of github distasteful. I thought, man these guys have not done an ounce of anything original, so what's the point in even encouraging this kind of slimyness? But then Github stagnated, and stagnated some more. And gitlab went past the initial copying and started innovating and adding more features. And now with their CI/CD, and fully integrated pipeline, they seem to be way, way ahead of Github, whereas Github seems to have focused more on handling the infrastructure needed for their sheer level of scale. In Github's case, I bet they felt their hands were tied because they had a whole ecosystem around them (like all the CI/CD companies that tightly integrate). Gitlab didn't have that issue, and was free to integrate to their heart's content. To be honest, the only reason I moved back to Github after trying Gitlab a couple years ago was the performance. But again, Gitlab seems to be the little engine that keeps chugging. They have a certain hunger about them to improve, that they're constantly and relentlessly chipping away at the software's flaws. And sytse is always active in all these threads armed with great answers to pretty much every single criticism leveled at them. So at least for now, they seem to be a lot more hungry than Github, so kudos to them. Once all this hubbub dies down, I may move all my repos to Gitlab, but mostly for the CI/CD pipeline. Github has totally earned their success, but they did seem to be stagnating for a while there.

knownothing 8y ago
GitHub is popular because it allows developers to connect the tools they want to use to their repository. Some people find having everything in one package convenient, but the truth is there are better tools for most everything GitLab does. I don't see how jamming everything into one application makes it appealing. I prefer GitHub's approach of allowing applications to deliver more information back into GitHub https://blog.github.com/2018-05-07-introducing-checks-api/ https://blog.github.com/2018-05-07-introducing-checks-api/ As the tooling we use becomes more complicated that will be the winning strategy.
- atonse 8y ago
  GitHub is popular because it's popular. A lot of it is network effects. As far as I can remember, they were the first user-friendly git web host. (Key being user-friendly). GitHub has also been really great at giving back to the community (in ways that even GitLab has benefited I'm sure). But I doubt the source of their popularity is the integration, although their robust APIs have made the ecosystem around them flourish.
  - modzu 8y ago
    well they also did some cool stuff like electron and github desktop
    - BugsJustFindMe 8y ago
      It's true that they also make widgets, but the proportion of people who use GitHub because of their desktop client has to be vanishingly tiny. GitHub became popular originally because of pull requests. It stays popular because of network effects that counterbalance its deficiencies (terrible search, weak bug management, short analytics window, etc).
  - briandear 8y ago
    The integrations are specifically why I use Github. When I had been on Bitbucket projects a few years ago, I remember how deficient they were with integrations. It was painful using Bitbucket for that specific reason.
- andrewstuart2 8y ago
  With GitLab, the convenience is just another option, though in my experience it's a very powerful option that will get you further, easier, than many of the alternatives. There's nobody saying you can't run your CI on Jenkins or Travis, or deploy to whatever, wherever. GitLab gives you some powerful options built-in, whereas GitHub _requires_ you to bring your own for many of those use cases. Not to mention it's open source, so if you find something you need, you can actually contribute it to GitLab. Not that it won't be work for you, but it's an option beyond asking somebody to put it on their dev team's roadmap.
  - briandear 8y ago
    It is not open source. That’s a bullshit assertion. It’s open “core.” There is a difference. And, you can write custom integrations for Github.
Shank 8y ago
> But then Github stagnated, and stagnated some more. And gitlab went past the initial copying and started innovating and adding more features. As an industry, we have a unhealthy obsession with change for change's sake. If we aren't redesigning everything, adding new features, or moving cheese all the time, we aren't innovating. But this the opposite of how we should think. If the GitHub repos page, for instance, just works, then we don't need to keep changing it. Zach Holman made a point, way back in 2012, that they intentionally hide UI features to preserve simplicity and trust in their design. [0] The thing I get the most from Gitlab's UI is this overwhelming sense of desire to add every feature, expose every option, and make it as utilitarian as possible. In doing so, though, Gitlab trades off approachability. To some this is a great thing, but to others, it's just on the edge of too much. If there's anything I want Gitlab to copy from GitHub, it's the opinionated decision making of what to show and when to show it. Gitlab's CI/CD stuff is a great example of this contrast. GitHub left it to Travis and other CI providers, which makes both GitHub and those providers have time to excel at what they're good at. They made the trade off deciding that they couldn't pull it off as well as others, so they delegated it and moved on. Gitlab took the opposite approach and built it in. While it adds value for some users, it can and (at least in my opinion) does over complicate the core feature set they offer. It's okay to have two products with different approaches, but I wouldn't say that it's a lack of innovation on GitHub's part. I would say it's just a different set of tradeoff balancing. [0]: https://speakerdeck.com/holman/git-and-github-secrets?slide=15 https://speakerdeck.com/holman/git-and-github-secrets?slide=...
- berkut 8y ago
  I agree - one thing that's pretty annoying about Gitlab (self-host at work) IMO is that over the past year, things just keep moving around in the UI or work differently as we upgrade versions. Personally, I'd prefer to use Github at work as I find it a fair bit easier to use and navigate, but Gitlab is much cheaper, so...
- stingraycharles 8y ago
  I agree with what you are saying, but plenty of issues with Github really needed to be solved in order for large projects to scale. Issue templates and the native “likes” rather than all those +1 comments were desperately needed and Github had no excuse not solving those issues for years.
segmondy 8y ago
Is it? They just wish to lure folks from Github to Gitlab and hopefully one day have their own multi billion dollar exit.
hinkley 8y ago
The problem I’m facing at work is that we are trapped in the Red Queen Problem. We grew our platform so fast that most of the core effort is about scalability, logging and reliability. Half the new stuff is bolted on by other teams and I can’t see this lasting. Someday one of our competitors is going to have copied our best features without all of our baggage and then we are one bad PR incident away from losing customers. Then we’ll spend a ton of our warchest on rewriting the whole thing and if the stars align the process will repeat. Assuming of course that nobody has spent it all on something stupid.
- guitarsteve 8y ago
  Thanks for sharing! I've often pondered that effect before but never knew it had a name. In my case I was thinking of AWS versus "newer" competitors like Google Cloud Platform and Azure. AWS has a lot of services and usually keeps them running and backwards compatible. Newer companies could avoid making the less successful services and copy or take inspiration from the most successful services.
  - hinkley 8y ago
    The latter is the Innovator’s Dilemma. Every bad decision my competitor made that I can identify ahead of time just narrows the gap. This is why I favor execution excellence over cheap wins. If you can consistently introduce features quarter after quarter year after year, you can run down a competitor. And your sales guys can position the product with that story. But it takes money and intestinal fortitude, and both are in short supply.
- brodock 8y ago
  I think this is the price of being the first, there is the cost of decisions on uncharted territories. The next competitor if they are smart they will learn from any mistake you had made.
  - hinkley 8y ago
    But it might be the same problem GitHub has now, which is why I mention it. Every feature on the backlog has to compete with some other plan to deal with the customers we already have, or employee retention. It’s hard to stay focused on customer facing concerns when you’re bleeding.
drb91 8y ago
To be fair, github hasn’t exactly been a beacon of innovation since introducing the “fork” button. Personally I’d love to see any of these VCS servers differentiate themselves by integrating with sourcegraph and/or offering a better CR experience. Sadly it seems like the market doesn’t care much about either :(
- sqs 8y ago
  Sourcegraph CEO here. The market does care, and there are a lot of companies using (and demanding) deeper Sourcegraph integration with code hosts, via things like our browser extension (https://about.sourcegraph.com/docs/features/browser-extension/ https://about.sourcegraph.com/docs/features/browser-extensio...), Phabricator integration (https://about.sourcegraph.com/docs/features/phabricator-extension https://about.sourcegraph.com/docs/features/phabricator-exte...), and built-in integrations. We've been so busy and haven't published much more about it yet, but there are large tech companies using these to get Sourcegraph integration right inside their code hosts. The feedback from our customers is very, very positive on these.
- s73v3r_ 8y ago
  "To be fair, github hasn’t exactly been a beacon of innovation since introducing the “fork” button." It's source code hosting. How much innovation does it need?
  - drb91 8y ago
    Well, that’s also what people said before GitHub.

by atonse 8y ago

knownothing 8y ago

GitHub is popular because it allows developers to connect the tools they want to use to their repository. Some people find having everything in one package convenient, but the truth is there are better tools for most everything GitLab does. I don't see how jamming everything into one application makes it appealing. I prefer GitHub's approach of allowing applications to deliver more information back into GitHub https://blog.github.com/2018-05-07-introducing-checks-api/ https://blog.github.com/2018-05-07-introducing-checks-api/ As the tooling we use becomes more complicated that will be the winning strategy.

atonse 8y ago
GitHub is popular because it's popular. A lot of it is network effects. As far as I can remember, they were the first user-friendly git web host. (Key being user-friendly). GitHub has also been really great at giving back to the community (in ways that even GitLab has benefited I'm sure). But I doubt the source of their popularity is the integration, although their robust APIs have made the ecosystem around them flourish.
- modzu 8y ago
  well they also did some cool stuff like electron and github desktop
  - BugsJustFindMe 8y ago
    It's true that they also make widgets, but the proportion of people who use GitHub because of their desktop client has to be vanishingly tiny. GitHub became popular originally because of pull requests. It stays popular because of network effects that counterbalance its deficiencies (terrible search, weak bug management, short analytics window, etc).
- briandear 8y ago
  The integrations are specifically why I use Github. When I had been on Bitbucket projects a few years ago, I remember how deficient they were with integrations. It was painful using Bitbucket for that specific reason.
andrewstuart2 8y ago
With GitLab, the convenience is just another option, though in my experience it's a very powerful option that will get you further, easier, than many of the alternatives. There's nobody saying you can't run your CI on Jenkins or Travis, or deploy to whatever, wherever. GitLab gives you some powerful options built-in, whereas GitHub _requires_ you to bring your own for many of those use cases. Not to mention it's open source, so if you find something you need, you can actually contribute it to GitLab. Not that it won't be work for you, but it's an option beyond asking somebody to put it on their dev team's roadmap.
- briandear 8y ago
  It is not open source. That’s a bullshit assertion. It’s open “core.” There is a difference. And, you can write custom integrations for Github.

Shank 8y ago

> But then Github stagnated, and stagnated some more. And gitlab went past the initial copying and started innovating and adding more features. As an industry, we have a unhealthy obsession with change for change's sake. If we aren't redesigning everything, adding new features, or moving cheese all the time, we aren't innovating. But this the opposite of how we should think. If the GitHub repos page, for instance, just works, then we don't need to keep changing it. Zach Holman made a point, way back in 2012, that they intentionally hide UI features to preserve simplicity and trust in their design. [0] The thing I get the most from Gitlab's UI is this overwhelming sense of desire to add every feature, expose every option, and make it as utilitarian as possible. In doing so, though, Gitlab trades off approachability. To some this is a great thing, but to others, it's just on the edge of too much. If there's anything I want Gitlab to copy from GitHub, it's the opinionated decision making of what to show and when to show it. Gitlab's CI/CD stuff is a great example of this contrast. GitHub left it to Travis and other CI providers, which makes both GitHub and those providers have time to excel at what they're good at. They made the trade off deciding that they couldn't pull it off as well as others, so they delegated it and moved on. Gitlab took the opposite approach and built it in. While it adds value for some users, it can and (at least in my opinion) does over complicate the core feature set they offer. It's okay to have two products with different approaches, but I wouldn't say that it's a lack of innovation on GitHub's part. I would say it's just a different set of tradeoff balancing. [0]: https://speakerdeck.com/holman/git-and-github-secrets?slide=15 https://speakerdeck.com/holman/git-and-github-secrets?slide=...

berkut 8y ago
I agree - one thing that's pretty annoying about Gitlab (self-host at work) IMO is that over the past year, things just keep moving around in the UI or work differently as we upgrade versions. Personally, I'd prefer to use Github at work as I find it a fair bit easier to use and navigate, but Gitlab is much cheaper, so...
stingraycharles 8y ago
I agree with what you are saying, but plenty of issues with Github really needed to be solved in order for large projects to scale. Issue templates and the native “likes” rather than all those +1 comments were desperately needed and Github had no excuse not solving those issues for years.

segmondy 8y ago

Is it? They just wish to lure folks from Github to Gitlab and hopefully one day have their own multi billion dollar exit.

hinkley 8y ago

The problem I’m facing at work is that we are trapped in the Red Queen Problem. We grew our platform so fast that most of the core effort is about scalability, logging and reliability. Half the new stuff is bolted on by other teams and I can’t see this lasting. Someday one of our competitors is going to have copied our best features without all of our baggage and then we are one bad PR incident away from losing customers. Then we’ll spend a ton of our warchest on rewriting the whole thing and if the stars align the process will repeat. Assuming of course that nobody has spent it all on something stupid.

guitarsteve 8y ago
Thanks for sharing! I've often pondered that effect before but never knew it had a name. In my case I was thinking of AWS versus "newer" competitors like Google Cloud Platform and Azure. AWS has a lot of services and usually keeps them running and backwards compatible. Newer companies could avoid making the less successful services and copy or take inspiration from the most successful services.
- hinkley 8y ago
  The latter is the Innovator’s Dilemma. Every bad decision my competitor made that I can identify ahead of time just narrows the gap. This is why I favor execution excellence over cheap wins. If you can consistently introduce features quarter after quarter year after year, you can run down a competitor. And your sales guys can position the product with that story. But it takes money and intestinal fortitude, and both are in short supply.
brodock 8y ago
I think this is the price of being the first, there is the cost of decisions on uncharted territories. The next competitor if they are smart they will learn from any mistake you had made.
- hinkley 8y ago
  But it might be the same problem GitHub has now, which is why I mention it. Every feature on the backlog has to compete with some other plan to deal with the customers we already have, or employee retention. It’s hard to stay focused on customer facing concerns when you’re bleeding.

drb91 8y ago

To be fair, github hasn’t exactly been a beacon of innovation since introducing the “fork” button. Personally I’d love to see any of these VCS servers differentiate themselves by integrating with sourcegraph and/or offering a better CR experience. Sadly it seems like the market doesn’t care much about either :(

sqs 8y ago
Sourcegraph CEO here. The market does care, and there are a lot of companies using (and demanding) deeper Sourcegraph integration with code hosts, via things like our browser extension (https://about.sourcegraph.com/docs/features/browser-extension/ https://about.sourcegraph.com/docs/features/browser-extensio...), Phabricator integration (https://about.sourcegraph.com/docs/features/phabricator-extension https://about.sourcegraph.com/docs/features/phabricator-exte...), and built-in integrations. We've been so busy and haven't published much more about it yet, but there are large tech companies using these to get Sourcegraph integration right inside their code hosts. The feedback from our customers is very, very positive on these.
s73v3r_ 8y ago
"To be fair, github hasn’t exactly been a beacon of innovation since introducing the “fork” button." It's source code hosting. How much innovation does it need?
- drb91 8y ago
  Well, that’s also what people said before GitHub.