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GitLab is like the average kid in class that everybody makes fun of for constantly asking questions, but the joke's on them because "a little bit of slope makes

GitLab is like the average kid in class that everybody makes fun of for constantly asking questions, but the joke's on them because "a little bit of slope makes up for a lot of y-intercept." While GitLab may have warts, I feel that they're very earnestly working to make the product better, bit by bit, day by day, and will one day surpass GitHub.

sytse 8y ago
Thanks! Incremental progress in the form of iteration is one of our core values https://about.gitlab.com/handbook/values/#iteration https://about.gitlab.com/handbook/values/#iteration
- tempaccount777 8y ago
  I have some questions to ask of you. 1. Why does gitlab have so many tiers? It would be better if you guys could repackage the features into fewer categories. 2. Why is the Gitlab UI so ugly? IMO, bitbucket and github are leaps and bounds ahead of you guys when it comes to design. 3. Can we get a dark mode for us night owls? 4. Finally, the morality question, You guys proudly associate yourselves with open-source and get help from loads of opensource devs, yet you greedily restrict simple features like epics, burndown charts, roadmaps, configurable issue boards etc. from the core/free categories. Looks like your key core goal is to make money... how are you any different from microsoft or google?
  - anonytrary 8y ago
    Asking questions antagonistically rarely elicits a response.
  - brandonwamboldt 8y ago
    1. They only have four tiers (four equivalent tiers for hosted and on-premise technically). This is quite reasonable, as they need to provide flexibility for their customers. They are quite clear about which tiers provide which features. 2. This is purely subjective. I quite like the design, both more than GitHub and Bitbucket. They do have a UX team, and they conduct regular user tests. They've also made a lot of improvements and continue to make improvements, but design will always be subjective. You CANNOT please everyone 3. I suggest putting a thumbs up for https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-ce/issues/18596 https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-ce/issues/18596, but ultimately it does create additional work for the UX team so I don't know if they'll end up doing it or not. You could try a user style, e.g. https://userstyles.org/styles/125366/gitlab-simple-dark https://userstyles.org/styles/125366/gitlab-simple-dark 4. GitLab is a company and needs to make money to continue employing developers to continue developing their product. Open source devs volunteer their time on GitLab CE, not any of the closed source features, and GitLab has open sourced enterprise features in the past if the demand is high. Also, there is nothing wrong with comparing them to Microsoft, as Microsoft has thousands of open source projects and is quite the open source contributor. I'd flip #4 on it's head. They aren't greedily restricting features, they are generously open sourcing features and giving them away for free. As a business, they have no obligation to do so.
    - tyldum 8y ago
      When my company subscribed there was only a community and enterprise tier. Now this has become the starter edition and I feel we are losing a lot of value. We are 200 employees, but only 10 developers using the advanced features. We really want to make GitLab our hub (GitOps and all), however the the cost of going beyond starter edition is mind blowing (x5). So if we are to embrace GitLab further we must abandon the idea of letting the whole company use GitLab freely and limit it to devs only. Being small doesn't mean that we are not in need if advanced features, we just have a smaller scale. Also as our initial tier was the top tier, and now is the bottom one, I fear GitLab will fence off future functionality with even more tiers at random. Further, the tiers creates some artificial barriers where we several times feel the some of the new features we receive are just barely functioning and are just there to entice you to upgrade to the next tier. We are all in all very happy with GitLab, however we are no longer pushing it as a central hub for the company.
      - manigandham 8y ago
        You pay 200 employees but don't want to spend $19/user/month on software for a company hub? That's not really a small company, and this seems like a budgeting problem if money is that tight. You can also try running multiple installations with a separate dev-only instance with more features. Also have you tried contacting Gitlab to negotiate? A few emails can go a long way.
        deleted 8y ago
        [deleted]
        bigtunacan 8y ago
        I would say 200 employees is fairly small company; and depending on the line of business it is certainly small enough that profit margins and thus spending may need to be closely watched. If you consider that the OP has only 10 out of 200 users that need the advanced features, but has to purchase the advanced features for all 200 users for anyone to use those features that is $45,600 a year. Now if it were possible for example to have a mixed licensing model; buy 10 Premium licenses for the users who need it and 190 Starter licenses for everyone else then that is $11,400 a year. That is a difference of $34,200 a year so it may be the difference between being able to hire another employee or not.
  - manigandham 8y ago
    All businesses need to make money, otherwise they stop being a business. That doesn't mean all companies are the same.
  - quadrangle 8y ago
    On the "Open Source" issue, they seem to be trying to keep a careful balance. They're doing the ideal thing and fully freeing a decent amount of stuff. But they have VC investors, so they have to pay them off with an exit sometime. And that fact on its own is the compromising thing that means they won't likely do just-enough to keep their own sustainable funding. They need to get profit not just pay all the team well. I'd like to see them at least become a Benefit Corp or similar to trust more that they won't end up selling out in some worse way that goes against the Open Source values they largely but incompletely embrace.
- jimkri 8y ago
  The Gitlab handbook is great! Helped me create something similar at my current company.
  - sytse 8y ago
    Awesome! And if you improved in it we would love a merge request back :)
WhyDoPeople 8y ago
Just curious, what specifically you mean by "surpass Github"? I mean this with no snarky intention. I'm just wondering what tasks Gitlab doesn't perform as well as Github for you; unless you were referring to the social awareness that Github has.
- whitepoplar 8y ago
  I mean surpass GitHub in both usage and revenue.
  - TheRealPomax 8y ago
    Revenue? GitHub has been operating at a loss right up to the moment that MS bought them for over a thousand times what they had to start making annually to not run a loss.
    - whitepoplar 8y ago
      You're confusing revenue with profit.
      - TheRealPomax 8y ago
        No, I'm not. Both are business health indicators, with revenue being the more important one, since you can be sustainable without being profitable. However, when you operation on a _loss_ your revenue is not sufficient, and Github has been running a loss right up to when MS bought them. While having no profit does not imply you have insufficient revenue, running your business at a loss absolutely does. So: wanting another company in the same space to have the same kind of revenue profile is extremely questionable; you want them to have a sustainable revenue model, and the ideally on top of that, be profitable.
- kasparsklavins 8y ago
  Performance and stability? Still yet to have a day where I havent had a 500 error on gitlab cloud.
sametmax 8y ago
> I feel that they're very earnestly working to make the product better, bit by bit, day by day, and will one day surpass GitHub. It's assuming github doesn't do that as well. As a paying github using, I can see they are improving my life a little bit more everyday. Like, lately, they introduced automatic security checks on python project dependencies. I'm glad gitlab exist. I feel safer, knowing I have a place to migrate to if MS screw up with gitup and no commercial replacement lives up to the task. But github is certainly not playing to loose.
vorpalhex 8y ago
I moved over a project from GitHub to GitLab recently - I wanted to try a competitor, and I wanted to take advantage of their CI/CD feature. I've actually been very impressed. The UI is laggy at times, and they haven't mastered the UX/information architecture like Github has, but they have added a lot of other valuable features.
andrewmcwatters 8y ago
Sometimes the valedictorian or most popular kid is always going to be better, no matter how much "hard work" in involved. Sometimes it's friends (marketing) and good looks (good design) that get you there. These are things that GitLab is losing on. Damn thing is so ugly from a layman's perspective, it's probably hard to figure out if they are technically superior because no one uses it. Private repo offerings are a tough competitive space, too. Everyone knows who Atlassian is.
- whitepoplar 8y ago
  What do you find ugly about GitLab? I actually find the design to be comparable to GitHub, or better.

sytse 8y ago

Thanks! Incremental progress in the form of iteration is one of our core values https://about.gitlab.com/handbook/values/#iteration https://about.gitlab.com/handbook/values/#iteration

tempaccount777 8y ago
I have some questions to ask of you. 1. Why does gitlab have so many tiers? It would be better if you guys could repackage the features into fewer categories. 2. Why is the Gitlab UI so ugly? IMO, bitbucket and github are leaps and bounds ahead of you guys when it comes to design. 3. Can we get a dark mode for us night owls? 4. Finally, the morality question, You guys proudly associate yourselves with open-source and get help from loads of opensource devs, yet you greedily restrict simple features like epics, burndown charts, roadmaps, configurable issue boards etc. from the core/free categories. Looks like your key core goal is to make money... how are you any different from microsoft or google?
- anonytrary 8y ago
  Asking questions antagonistically rarely elicits a response.
- brandonwamboldt 8y ago
  1. They only have four tiers (four equivalent tiers for hosted and on-premise technically). This is quite reasonable, as they need to provide flexibility for their customers. They are quite clear about which tiers provide which features. 2. This is purely subjective. I quite like the design, both more than GitHub and Bitbucket. They do have a UX team, and they conduct regular user tests. They've also made a lot of improvements and continue to make improvements, but design will always be subjective. You CANNOT please everyone 3. I suggest putting a thumbs up for https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-ce/issues/18596 https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-ce/issues/18596, but ultimately it does create additional work for the UX team so I don't know if they'll end up doing it or not. You could try a user style, e.g. https://userstyles.org/styles/125366/gitlab-simple-dark https://userstyles.org/styles/125366/gitlab-simple-dark 4. GitLab is a company and needs to make money to continue employing developers to continue developing their product. Open source devs volunteer their time on GitLab CE, not any of the closed source features, and GitLab has open sourced enterprise features in the past if the demand is high. Also, there is nothing wrong with comparing them to Microsoft, as Microsoft has thousands of open source projects and is quite the open source contributor. I'd flip #4 on it's head. They aren't greedily restricting features, they are generously open sourcing features and giving them away for free. As a business, they have no obligation to do so.
  - tyldum 8y ago
    When my company subscribed there was only a community and enterprise tier. Now this has become the starter edition and I feel we are losing a lot of value. We are 200 employees, but only 10 developers using the advanced features. We really want to make GitLab our hub (GitOps and all), however the the cost of going beyond starter edition is mind blowing (x5). So if we are to embrace GitLab further we must abandon the idea of letting the whole company use GitLab freely and limit it to devs only. Being small doesn't mean that we are not in need if advanced features, we just have a smaller scale. Also as our initial tier was the top tier, and now is the bottom one, I fear GitLab will fence off future functionality with even more tiers at random. Further, the tiers creates some artificial barriers where we several times feel the some of the new features we receive are just barely functioning and are just there to entice you to upgrade to the next tier. We are all in all very happy with GitLab, however we are no longer pushing it as a central hub for the company.
    - manigandham 8y ago
      You pay 200 employees but don't want to spend $19/user/month on software for a company hub? That's not really a small company, and this seems like a budgeting problem if money is that tight. You can also try running multiple installations with a separate dev-only instance with more features. Also have you tried contacting Gitlab to negotiate? A few emails can go a long way.
      - deleted 8y ago
        [deleted]
      - bigtunacan 8y ago
        I would say 200 employees is fairly small company; and depending on the line of business it is certainly small enough that profit margins and thus spending may need to be closely watched. If you consider that the OP has only 10 out of 200 users that need the advanced features, but has to purchase the advanced features for all 200 users for anyone to use those features that is $45,600 a year. Now if it were possible for example to have a mixed licensing model; buy 10 Premium licenses for the users who need it and 190 Starter licenses for everyone else then that is $11,400 a year. That is a difference of $34,200 a year so it may be the difference between being able to hire another employee or not.
- manigandham 8y ago
  All businesses need to make money, otherwise they stop being a business. That doesn't mean all companies are the same.
- quadrangle 8y ago
  On the "Open Source" issue, they seem to be trying to keep a careful balance. They're doing the ideal thing and fully freeing a decent amount of stuff. But they have VC investors, so they have to pay them off with an exit sometime. And that fact on its own is the compromising thing that means they won't likely do just-enough to keep their own sustainable funding. They need to get profit not just pay all the team well. I'd like to see them at least become a Benefit Corp or similar to trust more that they won't end up selling out in some worse way that goes against the Open Source values they largely but incompletely embrace.
jimkri 8y ago
The Gitlab handbook is great! Helped me create something similar at my current company.
- sytse 8y ago
  Awesome! And if you improved in it we would love a merge request back :)

WhyDoPeople 8y ago

Just curious, what specifically you mean by "surpass Github"? I mean this with no snarky intention. I'm just wondering what tasks Gitlab doesn't perform as well as Github for you; unless you were referring to the social awareness that Github has.

whitepoplar 8y ago
I mean surpass GitHub in both usage and revenue.
- TheRealPomax 8y ago
  Revenue? GitHub has been operating at a loss right up to the moment that MS bought them for over a thousand times what they had to start making annually to not run a loss.
  - whitepoplar 8y ago
    You're confusing revenue with profit.
    - TheRealPomax 8y ago
      No, I'm not. Both are business health indicators, with revenue being the more important one, since you can be sustainable without being profitable. However, when you operation on a _loss_ your revenue is not sufficient, and Github has been running a loss right up to when MS bought them. While having no profit does not imply you have insufficient revenue, running your business at a loss absolutely does. So: wanting another company in the same space to have the same kind of revenue profile is extremely questionable; you want them to have a sustainable revenue model, and the ideally on top of that, be profitable.
kasparsklavins 8y ago
Performance and stability? Still yet to have a day where I havent had a 500 error on gitlab cloud.

sametmax 8y ago

> I feel that they're very earnestly working to make the product better, bit by bit, day by day, and will one day surpass GitHub. It's assuming github doesn't do that as well. As a paying github using, I can see they are improving my life a little bit more everyday. Like, lately, they introduced automatic security checks on python project dependencies. I'm glad gitlab exist. I feel safer, knowing I have a place to migrate to if MS screw up with gitup and no commercial replacement lives up to the task. But github is certainly not playing to loose.

vorpalhex 8y ago

I moved over a project from GitHub to GitLab recently - I wanted to try a competitor, and I wanted to take advantage of their CI/CD feature. I've actually been very impressed. The UI is laggy at times, and they haven't mastered the UX/information architecture like Github has, but they have added a lot of other valuable features.

andrewmcwatters 8y ago

Sometimes the valedictorian or most popular kid is always going to be better, no matter how much "hard work" in involved. Sometimes it's friends (marketing) and good looks (good design) that get you there. These are things that GitLab is losing on. Damn thing is so ugly from a layman's perspective, it's probably hard to figure out if they are technically superior because no one uses it. Private repo offerings are a tough competitive space, too. Everyone knows who Atlassian is.

whitepoplar 8y ago
What do you find ugly about GitLab? I actually find the design to be comparable to GitHub, or better.