8 ms·

Does anyone know why GitLab hasn't taken off so much amongst open source projects? I have no horse in the race (indeed, I'd love for there to be more variety i

Does anyone know why GitLab hasn't taken off so much amongst open source projects? I have no horse in the race (indeed, I'd love for there to be more variety in this space) but one of my jobs is to link to open source repos and I've just checked.. and the last one I linked to was in December 2018. In the niches I cover, almost no-one seems to actually using GitLab for their open source repos. Lest you think it's just me, compare https://news.ycombinator.com/from?site=github.com https://news.ycombinator.com/from?site=github.com to https://news.ycombinator.com/from?site=gitlab.com https://news.ycombinator.com/from?site=gitlab.com .. the first is packed with projects posted here on a daily basis. The latter? 13 project links in about 50 days.

madamelic 7y ago
Corporate usage. GitHub is the standard so pretty much everyone has a GitHub account, companies ask for GitHub accounts on applications, it's the hub currently. GitLab is the superior product in all regards, but GitHub has the network.
- badrequest 7y ago
  When I was applying for jobs recently, a few of them had explicit GitHub link fields, sometimes even regex validated to ensure ONLY GitHub links got posted. I didn't finish filling out those applications.
  - fogs 7y ago
    Echoing that. I was looking for several jobs as a senior dev. 15 years of work experience in corp. environments do not necessarily result in much GitHub activity -- I discarded every opening that required linking your private repo.
- ksec 7y ago
  >GitLab is the superior product in all regards, but GitHub has the network. I could agree on features, but not UX. Github is still the king.
  - jniedrauer 7y ago
    The github pull request UI is severely lacking. Even something as simple as being able to see changes that address PR comments is surprisingly difficult.
  - dsumenkovic 7y ago
    I'd like to share more data on the UX front. There are two efforts underway to establish the experience baselines [1] as well as a common design system [2] Hopefully these efforts allow us to look at our UX holistically, and to focus on making high-quality components that are used throughout the product. [1] - https://about.gitlab.com/handbook/engineering/ux/experience-baseline-recommendations/ https://about.gitlab.com/handbook/engineering/ux/experience-... [2] - https://about.gitlab.com/handbook/engineering/ux/pajamas-design-system/ https://about.gitlab.com/handbook/engineering/ux/pajamas-des...
    - rmetzler 7y ago
      One thing that bugs me really hard about gitlab.com (and gitlab ce) is the broken flow when I come about an interesting repo and want to star it. I'm logged out, click on "Star", log in and I'm at my profile. I have to navigate back to the repository in question and click "Star" again. Other than that it's really great software. I wouldn't want to miss running Gitlab CI.
lucideer 7y ago
Search friendliness. Quite a few open-source projects rely heavily on being findable, and often use their Github README as a sort of "marketing site" for developers. Finding projects organically on Gitlab is a nightmare.
- tikkabhuna 7y ago
  Search in general in Gitlab is painful. Searches seem to require 3 or more characters, but if you put two you just don't see any results. No warning saying add more. Pretty intuitive. The file name search is pretty rapid though.
  - toupeira 7y ago
    We have an ongoing project to enable Elasticsearch on gitlab.com, which will greatly improve this: https://gitlab.com/groups/gitlab-org/-/epics/153 https://gitlab.com/groups/gitlab-org/-/epics/153 There's also a dedicated Search team being built at the moment to focus just on this.
    - tikkabhuna 7y ago
      That's good to know, thanks! Gitlab is one of the few products where I look forward to each release. You guys are doing a great job at keeping interest high and your communication is great.
  - lone_haxx0r 7y ago
    Github search is not much better. I've resorted to using google search and append site:github.com to my query.
- ndarwincorn 7y ago
  When was the last time you found a project organically on GitHub?
  - lucideer 7y ago
    Well, organically is a vague term. My usage of it was: go to GitLab/Hub and type into global site search box to find a project. This seemingly simple action does not work on Gitlab. To answer your question, I do the above often on Github. Probably found projects that way as recently as last week.
packetlost 7y ago
Looks like freedesktop.org hosts their code on a private GitLab instance now: https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/explore/groups https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/explore/groups I'm guessing GitLab will slowly gain more and more traction in the OSS community. It hasn't been around for nearly as long as GitHub, and has several compelling reasons to be used over GitHub specifically for open source projects.
toupeira 7y ago
There are some high-profile FOSS projects using GitLab, but they're not as visible as they would be on GitHub because they host their own instances: - https://gitlab.gnome.org/ https://gitlab.gnome.org/ - https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/ https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/ - https://salsa.debian.org/ https://salsa.debian.org/ (AFAIK this is an ongoing migration) Others are considering a migration: - KDE: https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab/issues/24900 https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab/issues/24900 - GNU Emacs: https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab/issues/28152 https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab/issues/28152 Maybe someday we'll have federation to work around this: https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab/issues/30672 https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab/issues/30672 :-)
- btasovac 7y ago
  The Debian migration is actually finished.
  - toupeira 7y ago
    Awesome, as a long-time Debian user myself that makes me very happy :)
- geerlingguy 7y ago
  And Drupal just finished switching over (self hosted).
- stdcall83 7y ago
  U-boot just made the transition.
- mgbmtl 7y ago
  We have over 700 users on https://lab.civicrm.org https://lab.civicrm.org (a FOSS CRM for non-profits). While bits of the project still rely on Jenkins and Github, having most of our community on Gitlab really changes the dynamics of the project. At first people were worried about losing contributors because "everyone is on Github", but increasingly it's the other way around. We have a lot of accidental techies who start issue tracking, testing patches, etc, and so it's nice to have a clear project structure.
btasovac 7y ago
We are offering our top tiers (Ultimate or Gold) for free to open source projects [1]. You can see the complete list in our repo [2]. Some of the most recent projects that received our free license are Arch Linux, the Tor Project, edX (currently migrating). Just to add a few more: Drupal, Haskell, VLC, Kali Linux, Lineage OS, and more on this comment [3]. [1] - https://about.gitlab.com/solutions/open-source/program/ https://about.gitlab.com/solutions/open-source/program/ [2] - https://gitlab.com/gitlab-com/marketing/community-relations/gitlab-oss/blob/master/data/oss_projects.yml https://gitlab.com/gitlab-com/marketing/community-relations/... [3] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18724015 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18724015
- ninjanomnom 7y ago
  Part of the application for open source projects here requires you specify how many "seats" you need. > The number of seats is the number of different users that will use this license in the next year. This seems counter to how many open source projects work where contributors come out of nowhere to make a contribution and may or may not stick around. How does this work when you have hundreds or thousands of unique contributors a year, and you have no good way of predicting?
  - mattashii 7y ago
    Note: not a GL employee, but EE subscriber IIRC seats are calculated based on monthly active users, and are a soft cap: we've outgrown our license, so we will have to retroactively buy the missing seats on our next license renewal. I expect this is no different from a OS license, except that that OS project doesn't pay for the license.
Ajedi32 7y ago
It's the network effect. GitHub was first-to-market. Almost all open source contributors have a GitHub account these days. Many older projects started there long before GitLab was a viable competitor. Now assume you're starting a new open source project. Most of the other open source projects you've seen are hosted on GitHub. Most of the other developers you interact with have GitHub accounts. GitLab has all the same features and is slowly growing, but still isn't nearly as popular as GitHub is. Which platform do you choose for hosting your project? GitLab is certainly a worthy competitor, but unless there arises a strongly compelling reason to switch I can't really see it overcoming that barrier and becoming the new de-facto standard for open source projects for quite some time.
- kardos 7y ago
  I disagree that signing up for an account at gitlab.com is a barrier. Anyone willing and capable to make contributions won't be stymied by that step. There's even a "Sign in with GitHub" button..!
  - stormtv 7y ago
    I think the biggest thing is the context switching between different projects. I have open source projects that I wouldn't be able to move to GitLab as I would have to coordinate the move with all the other collaborators and make sure the users of the repository are aware that the new code will be in GitLab.
  - rossmohax 7y ago
    Gitlab doesn't have even basic notification centre, people been asking it for years. Github API integration is stellar, API token permissions can be configured granularly, Github apps marketplace is awesome way to start using third party services. First class integration experience is opposite from Gitlab goals, they try to be everything and capture every single usecase and it shows .
    - joshlambert 7y ago
      Hi, we do believe in the single application offering the best long term user experience and outcomes, but do understand that all of our features may not work for everyone. This is happens for a variety of reasons (completeness, migrations, specific project requirements, etc.) Because of this, we do offer our API and the ability for our community to contribute integrations directly to the codebase. We have a pretty rich set today, you can see at: https://docs.gitlab.com/ee/user/project/integrations/project_services.html#services https://docs.gitlab.com/ee/user/project/integrations/project... We're also working to further improve our integration options, with a dedicated team: https://about.gitlab.com/direction/ecosystem/ https://about.gitlab.com/direction/ecosystem/. This team will be responsible for our broader API, an upcoming SDK, as well as continuing to improve our existing integrations like JIRA and Jenkins. This team is just getting under way, but I wanted note our investments here. > Github API integration is stellar, API token permissions can be configured granularly, Github apps marketplace is awesome way to start using third party services. PAT granularity has indeed been a pain point, and we should be solving this soon by offering the ability to restrict them by groups/projects: https://gitlab.com/groups/gitlab-org/-/epics/182 https://gitlab.com/groups/gitlab-org/-/epics/182
taftster 7y ago
On-premise hosting. This is so important to organizations that can't use internet hosted services, for all sorts of various reasons.
- notyourday 7y ago
  Github Enterprise.
  - zeeZ 7y ago
    The pricing for GitHub Enterprise is "Contact Sales", which as a smallish yet privacy focused company we don't even bother with anymore. That uncertainty plus the keyword "Enterprise" have always amounted to "ridiculously expensive".
    - notyourday 7y ago
      That I agree certainly agree with. However, the other approach is the one that certainly should put a damper onto the valuation.
teppifk 7y ago
> Does anyone know why GitLab hasn't taken off so much amongst open source projects? The marketing is pretty bad for one. Go to gitlab.com and you see a site that is mostly extolling the virtues of their commercial product and pricing. There is a "try gitlab for free" but it is aimed very much as a try-before-you-buy for businesses. That's all good and fine, but it is the polar opposite of how github went about acquiring their network. github was marketed heavily as a social site, their marketing was viral. I don't think it is wrong, but if gitlab is trying to convey messaging that they are "social coding" platform or even an open-source project host, and not just b2b, they are doing a pretty poor job of it.
- gmueckl 7y ago
  I recently started to ship around for hosting solutions and this showed me how much github is leeching off the openly visible projects. Everything is focussed on making projwcts and users as visible as possible. Site wide search, directories of hosted projects, free user account to get started as a contributor... Extreme SEO for hosted public projects aerves as a marketing trojan hirse for their commercial offers. At the same time, the networking effect forces everybody to stay on github or massively lose visibility. The frustrating part is that most other hosters don't get that - especially none that support some actual VCSes instead of a glorified patch database manager. If I could stomach writing all the web frontend and plumbing stuff for a hosting service and doing all the marketing, I'd try to start my own. I have harder and more interesting problems to solve, though.
deepakhj 7y ago
SEO and the website isn't as friendly to navigate as Github is. Github makes your project look like a first class citizen while Gitlab has too much going on.
PopeDotNinja 7y ago
Honestly for me it's mostly because I started using GitHub first. The products aren't that different to me, mostly because I'm not a power user trying to squeeze the most of every last feature.
rasz 7y ago
I dont understand their UI at all. Whenever some project is hosted on gitlab I just stare at the page for a while and give up.
- johnisgood 7y ago
  Do not just stare, hover over the icons.
- Existenceblinks 7y ago
  I work on git hosts integration, we aim to support Github, Bitbucket and Gitlab. I don't understand Gitlab api just like I don't understand their UI. It's confusing. For example while the others call Repo as Repo, Gitlab call Repo as Project, and call Tree as Repo.
  - tseabra 7y ago
    I understand your point, however I've come to enjoy the separation between Git concepts (Repository) and GitLab features (Project, Issues, CI/CD). That said, I still find GitHub's UI and UX more appealing.
elgenie 7y ago
To overcome an entrenched competitor with network effects, the upstart has to be significantly and obviously better for a new project to adopt. To maintain market and mindshare, GitHub doesn't have to become/stay better than GitLab; they just have to be good enough, or at least appear to be.

madamelic 7y ago

Corporate usage. GitHub is the standard so pretty much everyone has a GitHub account, companies ask for GitHub accounts on applications, it's the hub currently. GitLab is the superior product in all regards, but GitHub has the network.

badrequest 7y ago
When I was applying for jobs recently, a few of them had explicit GitHub link fields, sometimes even regex validated to ensure ONLY GitHub links got posted. I didn't finish filling out those applications.
- fogs 7y ago
  Echoing that. I was looking for several jobs as a senior dev. 15 years of work experience in corp. environments do not necessarily result in much GitHub activity -- I discarded every opening that required linking your private repo.
ksec 7y ago
>GitLab is the superior product in all regards, but GitHub has the network. I could agree on features, but not UX. Github is still the king.
- jniedrauer 7y ago
  The github pull request UI is severely lacking. Even something as simple as being able to see changes that address PR comments is surprisingly difficult.
- dsumenkovic 7y ago
  I'd like to share more data on the UX front. There are two efforts underway to establish the experience baselines [1] as well as a common design system [2] Hopefully these efforts allow us to look at our UX holistically, and to focus on making high-quality components that are used throughout the product. [1] - https://about.gitlab.com/handbook/engineering/ux/experience-baseline-recommendations/ https://about.gitlab.com/handbook/engineering/ux/experience-... [2] - https://about.gitlab.com/handbook/engineering/ux/pajamas-design-system/ https://about.gitlab.com/handbook/engineering/ux/pajamas-des...
  - rmetzler 7y ago
    One thing that bugs me really hard about gitlab.com (and gitlab ce) is the broken flow when I come about an interesting repo and want to star it. I'm logged out, click on "Star", log in and I'm at my profile. I have to navigate back to the repository in question and click "Star" again. Other than that it's really great software. I wouldn't want to miss running Gitlab CI.

lucideer 7y ago

Search friendliness. Quite a few open-source projects rely heavily on being findable, and often use their Github README as a sort of "marketing site" for developers. Finding projects organically on Gitlab is a nightmare.

tikkabhuna 7y ago
Search in general in Gitlab is painful. Searches seem to require 3 or more characters, but if you put two you just don't see any results. No warning saying add more. Pretty intuitive. The file name search is pretty rapid though.
- toupeira 7y ago
  We have an ongoing project to enable Elasticsearch on gitlab.com, which will greatly improve this: https://gitlab.com/groups/gitlab-org/-/epics/153 https://gitlab.com/groups/gitlab-org/-/epics/153 There's also a dedicated Search team being built at the moment to focus just on this.
  - tikkabhuna 7y ago
    That's good to know, thanks! Gitlab is one of the few products where I look forward to each release. You guys are doing a great job at keeping interest high and your communication is great.
- lone_haxx0r 7y ago
  Github search is not much better. I've resorted to using google search and append site:github.com to my query.
ndarwincorn 7y ago
When was the last time you found a project organically on GitHub?
- lucideer 7y ago
  Well, organically is a vague term. My usage of it was: go to GitLab/Hub and type into global site search box to find a project. This seemingly simple action does not work on Gitlab. To answer your question, I do the above often on Github. Probably found projects that way as recently as last week.

packetlost 7y ago

Looks like freedesktop.org hosts their code on a private GitLab instance now: https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/explore/groups https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/explore/groups I'm guessing GitLab will slowly gain more and more traction in the OSS community. It hasn't been around for nearly as long as GitHub, and has several compelling reasons to be used over GitHub specifically for open source projects.

toupeira 7y ago

There are some high-profile FOSS projects using GitLab, but they're not as visible as they would be on GitHub because they host their own instances: - https://gitlab.gnome.org/ https://gitlab.gnome.org/ - https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/ https://gitlab.freedesktop.org/ - https://salsa.debian.org/ https://salsa.debian.org/ (AFAIK this is an ongoing migration) Others are considering a migration: - KDE: https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab/issues/24900 https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab/issues/24900 - GNU Emacs: https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab/issues/28152 https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab/issues/28152 Maybe someday we'll have federation to work around this: https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab/issues/30672 https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab/issues/30672 :-)

btasovac 7y ago
The Debian migration is actually finished.
- toupeira 7y ago
  Awesome, as a long-time Debian user myself that makes me very happy :)
geerlingguy 7y ago
And Drupal just finished switching over (self hosted).
stdcall83 7y ago
U-boot just made the transition.
mgbmtl 7y ago
We have over 700 users on https://lab.civicrm.org https://lab.civicrm.org (a FOSS CRM for non-profits). While bits of the project still rely on Jenkins and Github, having most of our community on Gitlab really changes the dynamics of the project. At first people were worried about losing contributors because "everyone is on Github", but increasingly it's the other way around. We have a lot of accidental techies who start issue tracking, testing patches, etc, and so it's nice to have a clear project structure.

btasovac 7y ago

We are offering our top tiers (Ultimate or Gold) for free to open source projects [1]. You can see the complete list in our repo [2]. Some of the most recent projects that received our free license are Arch Linux, the Tor Project, edX (currently migrating). Just to add a few more: Drupal, Haskell, VLC, Kali Linux, Lineage OS, and more on this comment [3]. [1] - https://about.gitlab.com/solutions/open-source/program/ https://about.gitlab.com/solutions/open-source/program/ [2] - https://gitlab.com/gitlab-com/marketing/community-relations/gitlab-oss/blob/master/data/oss_projects.yml https://gitlab.com/gitlab-com/marketing/community-relations/... [3] - https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18724015 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18724015

ninjanomnom 7y ago
Part of the application for open source projects here requires you specify how many "seats" you need. > The number of seats is the number of different users that will use this license in the next year. This seems counter to how many open source projects work where contributors come out of nowhere to make a contribution and may or may not stick around. How does this work when you have hundreds or thousands of unique contributors a year, and you have no good way of predicting?
- mattashii 7y ago
  Note: not a GL employee, but EE subscriber IIRC seats are calculated based on monthly active users, and are a soft cap: we've outgrown our license, so we will have to retroactively buy the missing seats on our next license renewal. I expect this is no different from a OS license, except that that OS project doesn't pay for the license.

Ajedi32 7y ago

It's the network effect. GitHub was first-to-market. Almost all open source contributors have a GitHub account these days. Many older projects started there long before GitLab was a viable competitor. Now assume you're starting a new open source project. Most of the other open source projects you've seen are hosted on GitHub. Most of the other developers you interact with have GitHub accounts. GitLab has all the same features and is slowly growing, but still isn't nearly as popular as GitHub is. Which platform do you choose for hosting your project? GitLab is certainly a worthy competitor, but unless there arises a strongly compelling reason to switch I can't really see it overcoming that barrier and becoming the new de-facto standard for open source projects for quite some time.

kardos 7y ago
I disagree that signing up for an account at gitlab.com is a barrier. Anyone willing and capable to make contributions won't be stymied by that step. There's even a "Sign in with GitHub" button..!
- stormtv 7y ago
  I think the biggest thing is the context switching between different projects. I have open source projects that I wouldn't be able to move to GitLab as I would have to coordinate the move with all the other collaborators and make sure the users of the repository are aware that the new code will be in GitLab.
- rossmohax 7y ago
  Gitlab doesn't have even basic notification centre, people been asking it for years. Github API integration is stellar, API token permissions can be configured granularly, Github apps marketplace is awesome way to start using third party services. First class integration experience is opposite from Gitlab goals, they try to be everything and capture every single usecase and it shows .
  - joshlambert 7y ago
    Hi, we do believe in the single application offering the best long term user experience and outcomes, but do understand that all of our features may not work for everyone. This is happens for a variety of reasons (completeness, migrations, specific project requirements, etc.) Because of this, we do offer our API and the ability for our community to contribute integrations directly to the codebase. We have a pretty rich set today, you can see at: https://docs.gitlab.com/ee/user/project/integrations/project_services.html#services https://docs.gitlab.com/ee/user/project/integrations/project... We're also working to further improve our integration options, with a dedicated team: https://about.gitlab.com/direction/ecosystem/ https://about.gitlab.com/direction/ecosystem/. This team will be responsible for our broader API, an upcoming SDK, as well as continuing to improve our existing integrations like JIRA and Jenkins. This team is just getting under way, but I wanted note our investments here. > Github API integration is stellar, API token permissions can be configured granularly, Github apps marketplace is awesome way to start using third party services. PAT granularity has indeed been a pain point, and we should be solving this soon by offering the ability to restrict them by groups/projects: https://gitlab.com/groups/gitlab-org/-/epics/182 https://gitlab.com/groups/gitlab-org/-/epics/182

taftster 7y ago

On-premise hosting. This is so important to organizations that can't use internet hosted services, for all sorts of various reasons.

notyourday 7y ago
Github Enterprise.
- zeeZ 7y ago
  The pricing for GitHub Enterprise is "Contact Sales", which as a smallish yet privacy focused company we don't even bother with anymore. That uncertainty plus the keyword "Enterprise" have always amounted to "ridiculously expensive".
  - notyourday 7y ago
    That I agree certainly agree with. However, the other approach is the one that certainly should put a damper onto the valuation.

teppifk 7y ago

> Does anyone know why GitLab hasn't taken off so much amongst open source projects? The marketing is pretty bad for one. Go to gitlab.com and you see a site that is mostly extolling the virtues of their commercial product and pricing. There is a "try gitlab for free" but it is aimed very much as a try-before-you-buy for businesses. That's all good and fine, but it is the polar opposite of how github went about acquiring their network. github was marketed heavily as a social site, their marketing was viral. I don't think it is wrong, but if gitlab is trying to convey messaging that they are "social coding" platform or even an open-source project host, and not just b2b, they are doing a pretty poor job of it.

gmueckl 7y ago
I recently started to ship around for hosting solutions and this showed me how much github is leeching off the openly visible projects. Everything is focussed on making projwcts and users as visible as possible. Site wide search, directories of hosted projects, free user account to get started as a contributor... Extreme SEO for hosted public projects aerves as a marketing trojan hirse for their commercial offers. At the same time, the networking effect forces everybody to stay on github or massively lose visibility. The frustrating part is that most other hosters don't get that - especially none that support some actual VCSes instead of a glorified patch database manager. If I could stomach writing all the web frontend and plumbing stuff for a hosting service and doing all the marketing, I'd try to start my own. I have harder and more interesting problems to solve, though.

deepakhj 7y ago

SEO and the website isn't as friendly to navigate as Github is. Github makes your project look like a first class citizen while Gitlab has too much going on.

PopeDotNinja 7y ago

Honestly for me it's mostly because I started using GitHub first. The products aren't that different to me, mostly because I'm not a power user trying to squeeze the most of every last feature.

rasz 7y ago

I dont understand their UI at all. Whenever some project is hosted on gitlab I just stare at the page for a while and give up.

johnisgood 7y ago
Do not just stare, hover over the icons.
Existenceblinks 7y ago
I work on git hosts integration, we aim to support Github, Bitbucket and Gitlab. I don't understand Gitlab api just like I don't understand their UI. It's confusing. For example while the others call Repo as Repo, Gitlab call Repo as Project, and call Tree as Repo.
- tseabra 7y ago
  I understand your point, however I've come to enjoy the separation between Git concepts (Repository) and GitLab features (Project, Issues, CI/CD). That said, I still find GitHub's UI and UX more appealing.

elgenie 7y ago

To overcome an entrenched competitor with network effects, the upstart has to be significantly and obviously better for a new project to adopt. To maintain market and mindshare, GitHub doesn't have to become/stay better than GitLab; they just have to be good enough, or at least appear to be.