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I feel as though this announcement caught GitLab by surprise and it scrambled to put a strong message out there that it already had similar offerings in place.

I feel as though this announcement caught GitLab by surprise and it scrambled to put a strong message out there that it already had similar offerings in place. At the same time, however, I don't think their choice of phrasing is the most appropriate. It'd probably have been better handled more subtly. But does it matter at all? If I host critical code somewhere, it has to be available, and GitLab's uptime history[0] is so much poorer compared to GitHub's[1], with service disruptions and degradations being more common, and far more severe. I don't understand why GitLab doesn't focus on improving the quality of their service. It's not like this is new. Edit: I feel like I came across as very sour, and I am. But I do like GitLab. I've actually used its CI and Docker image repository in the past and prefer how everything is in one place. I've even written fairly a fairly comprehensive article outlining a deployment pipeline leveraging their tech, but I just don't like service disruptions, especially when they're normalized. [0]: https://status.gitlab.com/pages/history/5b36dc6502d06804c08349f7 https://status.gitlab.com/pages/history/5b36dc6502d06804c083... [1]: https://www.githubstatus.com/history https://www.githubstatus.com/history

toyg 7y ago
> I've even written fairly a fairly comprehensive article outlining a deployment pipeline leveraging their tech Link?
- amingilani 7y ago
  Sorry, I didn't think it was relevant nor appropriate to promote my own content, but here: https://www.toptal.com/devops/effective-ci-cd-deployment-pipeline#contract-just-respected-software-architects https://www.toptal.com/devops/effective-ci-cd-deployment-pip... I don't use their container system here, though. It's just GitLab CI.
prh8 7y ago
Maybe's it's just me, but it seems like Gitlab lists every issue they suffer, while Github is listing when it's (practically) down and non-functional. Would be interested if someone could fill in some details though.
- jazoom 7y ago
  This. I use GitLab most days and I personally haven't had a disruption for well over a year. The only thing I notice is the free runners are sometimes slow to pick up my jobs, but I certainly can't complain about that since they're free runners. Now if I was going to complain about something it's that they STILL sort images in the registry alphabetically instead of chronologically. I can't even imagine a scenario where that makes any kind of sense. So maybe the opposite is true. Maybe they're totally focused on reliability and common sense fixes have been ignored.
kakamba 7y ago
I hate when companies steal from competitors. There are many examples to that unfortunately. Sometimes the copycat is thought to be the original because it meets a bigger audience sooner, or provides same services cheaper[0]. I respect the open source culture at GitLab. I like how transparent they are, how they handle issues together with the community. But, this is a feature that is very generic. You can't blame a phone company to put a camera to their phone because company-x had it before. > It'd probably have been better handled more subtly. I don't think they should've handled it at all, because of their past. Today's GitLab is very different than when it was first launched as an open source project - while the logo was more like a cat[1][2]. But being passive aggressive to GitHub, the company that they think that is stealing their ideas, while still having parts that are remnants of a copy/paste job from that same GitHub, I don't know. This shouldn't mean that GitHub or anyone can steal freely GitLab's ideas. It's hard to find a solution as to how one can fix such past mistakes, but maybe an acknowledgement/owning before going defense mode help. > If I host critical code somewhere, it has to be available… +1, GitHub had hiccups too, but they have been pretty solid. [0]: https://venturebeat.com/2014/03/30/threes-vs-2048-when-rip-offs-do-better-than-the-original-game/ https://venturebeat.com/2014/03/30/threes-vs-2048-when-rip-o... [1]: https://web.archive.org/web/20130602065750im_/http://www.gitlab.com/img/sq_issues.png https://web.archive.org/web/20130602065750im_/http://www.git... [2]: https://web.archive.org/web/20131228051528/http://gitlab.org/screenshots/ https://web.archive.org/web/20131228051528/http://gitlab.org...
tw20190511demje 7y ago
GitLab's primary focus is on selling a product, not GitHub-like services. The hosted instance at gitlab.com is incidental to this. The number of commenters on HN who don't seem to get this is weirdly high. GitHub is competing for your attention and trying to convince you to use github.com similar to the way that Facebook wants you to use their site. GitLab is not. If you don't want to use gitlab.com because of low uptime, GitLab doesn't care. GitLab cares about whether you want to buy a GitLab license. If you're not in the market for that, then you were never a potential customer, anyway. Expecting GitLab to care about what you think about the ops history for gitlab.com is like thinking that a car dealer cares about how satisfied the people are who come in to have a coffee, eat a cookie, and test drive a car from the showroom, and never intend to buy anything. That's what gitlab.com is: a showroom.
- amingilani 7y ago
  > GitLab's primary focus is on selling a product, not GitHub-like services ... The number of commenters on HN who don't seem to get this is weirdly high. You're mistaken. This was true at one point, but no longer. GitLab maintains a document comparing itself to GitHub[0], has mature pricing tiers that go up to $99 per user[1], encouraged users to switch during the Microsoft acquisition by giving discounts on their higher tiers[3], and has paid me $500 in a bug bounty for reporting business logic flaws that allowed free users to leverage APIs that they shouldn't have had access to according to their plans. If you're actively pulling devs to your product, and even charging them. Make sure your product stays up. Also, please don't scorn people that disagree with you. Some times it's not them that "don't seem to get" it. [0]: https://about.gitlab.com/devops-tools/github-vs-gitlab.html https://about.gitlab.com/devops-tools/github-vs-gitlab.html [1]: https://about.gitlab.com/pricing/ https://about.gitlab.com/pricing/ [2]: https://about.gitlab.com/2018/06/03/movingtogitlab/ https://about.gitlab.com/2018/06/03/movingtogitlab/ [3]: The report is redacted, but you can see the bounty at my HackerOne profile: https://hackerone.com/gilani https://hackerone.com/gilani

toyg 7y ago

> I've even written fairly a fairly comprehensive article outlining a deployment pipeline leveraging their tech Link?

amingilani 7y ago
Sorry, I didn't think it was relevant nor appropriate to promote my own content, but here: https://www.toptal.com/devops/effective-ci-cd-deployment-pipeline#contract-just-respected-software-architects https://www.toptal.com/devops/effective-ci-cd-deployment-pip... I don't use their container system here, though. It's just GitLab CI.

prh8 7y ago

Maybe's it's just me, but it seems like Gitlab lists every issue they suffer, while Github is listing when it's (practically) down and non-functional. Would be interested if someone could fill in some details though.

jazoom 7y ago
This. I use GitLab most days and I personally haven't had a disruption for well over a year. The only thing I notice is the free runners are sometimes slow to pick up my jobs, but I certainly can't complain about that since they're free runners. Now if I was going to complain about something it's that they STILL sort images in the registry alphabetically instead of chronologically. I can't even imagine a scenario where that makes any kind of sense. So maybe the opposite is true. Maybe they're totally focused on reliability and common sense fixes have been ignored.

kakamba 7y ago

I hate when companies steal from competitors. There are many examples to that unfortunately. Sometimes the copycat is thought to be the original because it meets a bigger audience sooner, or provides same services cheaper[0]. I respect the open source culture at GitLab. I like how transparent they are, how they handle issues together with the community. But, this is a feature that is very generic. You can't blame a phone company to put a camera to their phone because company-x had it before. > It'd probably have been better handled more subtly. I don't think they should've handled it at all, because of their past. Today's GitLab is very different than when it was first launched as an open source project - while the logo was more like a cat[1][2]. But being passive aggressive to GitHub, the company that they think that is stealing their ideas, while still having parts that are remnants of a copy/paste job from that same GitHub, I don't know. This shouldn't mean that GitHub or anyone can steal freely GitLab's ideas. It's hard to find a solution as to how one can fix such past mistakes, but maybe an acknowledgement/owning before going defense mode help. > If I host critical code somewhere, it has to be available… +1, GitHub had hiccups too, but they have been pretty solid. [0]: https://venturebeat.com/2014/03/30/threes-vs-2048-when-rip-offs-do-better-than-the-original-game/ https://venturebeat.com/2014/03/30/threes-vs-2048-when-rip-o... [1]: https://web.archive.org/web/20130602065750im_/http://www.gitlab.com/img/sq_issues.png https://web.archive.org/web/20130602065750im_/http://www.git... [2]: https://web.archive.org/web/20131228051528/http://gitlab.org/screenshots/ https://web.archive.org/web/20131228051528/http://gitlab.org...

tw20190511demje 7y ago

GitLab's primary focus is on selling a product, not GitHub-like services. The hosted instance at gitlab.com is incidental to this. The number of commenters on HN who don't seem to get this is weirdly high. GitHub is competing for your attention and trying to convince you to use github.com similar to the way that Facebook wants you to use their site. GitLab is not. If you don't want to use gitlab.com because of low uptime, GitLab doesn't care. GitLab cares about whether you want to buy a GitLab license. If you're not in the market for that, then you were never a potential customer, anyway. Expecting GitLab to care about what you think about the ops history for gitlab.com is like thinking that a car dealer cares about how satisfied the people are who come in to have a coffee, eat a cookie, and test drive a car from the showroom, and never intend to buy anything. That's what gitlab.com is: a showroom.

amingilani 7y ago
> GitLab's primary focus is on selling a product, not GitHub-like services ... The number of commenters on HN who don't seem to get this is weirdly high. You're mistaken. This was true at one point, but no longer. GitLab maintains a document comparing itself to GitHub[0], has mature pricing tiers that go up to $99 per user[1], encouraged users to switch during the Microsoft acquisition by giving discounts on their higher tiers[3], and has paid me $500 in a bug bounty for reporting business logic flaws that allowed free users to leverage APIs that they shouldn't have had access to according to their plans. If you're actively pulling devs to your product, and even charging them. Make sure your product stays up. Also, please don't scorn people that disagree with you. Some times it's not them that "don't seem to get" it. [0]: https://about.gitlab.com/devops-tools/github-vs-gitlab.html https://about.gitlab.com/devops-tools/github-vs-gitlab.html [1]: https://about.gitlab.com/pricing/ https://about.gitlab.com/pricing/ [2]: https://about.gitlab.com/2018/06/03/movingtogitlab/ https://about.gitlab.com/2018/06/03/movingtogitlab/ [3]: The report is redacted, but you can see the bounty at my HackerOne profile: https://hackerone.com/gilani https://hackerone.com/gilani