4 ms·

What am I looking at?

omarhaneef 7y ago
The number of daily sign ups for sourcehut. This is billed as a competitor to GitLab. GitLab announced something about allowing some sort of telemetry on its site -- I didn't look into the details but its all over HN -- and people have complained that this might imply privacy violations. So this alternative to GitLab got a bump in signups.
- fatbas202 7y ago
  Thank you for providing context.
- sytse 7y ago
  We also called out our signups at GitLab when GitHub got acquired, so it is more than fair that Drew is posting this. BTW As Drew said https://gitlab.com/gitlab-com/www-gitlab-com/merge_requests/33289#note_235146489 https://gitlab.com/gitlab-com/www-gitlab-com/merge_requests/... we're pumping the brakes on the telemetry changes.
  - protomikron 7y ago
    > [...] we're pumping the brakes on the telemetry changes So you revert (don't implement it)? Thx! Reverting it is the right decision (I hope that means "pumping the brakes").
    - esotericn 7y ago
      From what I can tell they're still going to do it, but in a different way, e.g. it might be opt in (hopefully not in a fake-opt-in style like a GDPR popup) or opt out or whatever. Fundamentally they want to do telemetry it seems and are trying to figure out a hack to get people to accept it.
      - emilycook 7y ago
        (GitLab employee) we're discussing other options too, I'm personally advocating strongly against just going ahead with the current plan. My preference would be for no third-party involvement and just better ways to analyze the data we already have
  - 0x8BADF00D 7y ago
    I got an email from you guys yesterday and I have to say I was quite confused. My company is an EE customer and we pay for our seats. Why are you including this telemetry? For the free version I understand, but you should not be treating your enterprise customers like this.
    - sytse 7y ago
      I'm sorry our plans were so far off the mark.
  - acrispino 7y ago
    Pump the brakes? No. Reverse course, before your product ends up in the same place as github.
- scrollaway 7y ago
  I got Gitlab's email and immediately knew people would be freaking out about it. The fallacy of transparency: The more transparent you are, the more people think you're up to some shady shit. It's crazy.
  - JohnFen 7y ago
    That's not the fallacy of transparency. The real fallacy is when companies think that doing shady shit is OK as long as they're transparent about it.
    - scrollaway 7y ago
      Someone's going to have to explain to me how Gitlab is doing something shady with this stuff. Unless I'm misreading all this, it all looks like very standard telemetry, the same kind Github is doing.
      - gbear605 7y ago
        Part of the issue is that proprietary software would be running from a company that advertises itself as being oriented around free software. In addition, it would apply to the enterprise deployments, which is bad because enterprises can’t allow telemetry for regulatory and security reasons.
        scrollaway 7y ago
        > Part of the issue is that proprietary software would be running from a company that advertises itself as being oriented around free software. They're also running on Google's cloud, which is mostly proprietary software. And I can tell you right now they use the most-definitely-closed-source Salesforce for a lot of stuff. Do you think there's actually a significant amount of people who care about the license type of the internal tools of the companies they use?
        gbear605 7y ago
nurettin 7y ago
someone's git hosting service gets more signups because of bad PR by gitlab.
- guiraldelli 7y ago
  Sorry, but that's an understatement of what sourcehut.org is.

The number of daily sign ups for sourcehut. This is billed as a competitor to GitLab. GitLab announced something about allowing some sort of telemetry on its site -- I didn't look into the details but its all over HN -- and people have complained that this might imply privacy violations. So this alternative to GitLab got a bump in signups.

fatbas202 7y ago
Thank you for providing context.
sytse 7y ago
We also called out our signups at GitLab when GitHub got acquired, so it is more than fair that Drew is posting this. BTW As Drew said https://gitlab.com/gitlab-com/www-gitlab-com/merge_requests/33289#note_235146489 https://gitlab.com/gitlab-com/www-gitlab-com/merge_requests/... we're pumping the brakes on the telemetry changes.
- protomikron 7y ago
  > [...] we're pumping the brakes on the telemetry changes So you revert (don't implement it)? Thx! Reverting it is the right decision (I hope that means "pumping the brakes").
  - esotericn 7y ago
    From what I can tell they're still going to do it, but in a different way, e.g. it might be opt in (hopefully not in a fake-opt-in style like a GDPR popup) or opt out or whatever. Fundamentally they want to do telemetry it seems and are trying to figure out a hack to get people to accept it.
    - emilycook 7y ago
      (GitLab employee) we're discussing other options too, I'm personally advocating strongly against just going ahead with the current plan. My preference would be for no third-party involvement and just better ways to analyze the data we already have
- 0x8BADF00D 7y ago
  I got an email from you guys yesterday and I have to say I was quite confused. My company is an EE customer and we pay for our seats. Why are you including this telemetry? For the free version I understand, but you should not be treating your enterprise customers like this.
  - sytse 7y ago
    I'm sorry our plans were so far off the mark.
- acrispino 7y ago
  Pump the brakes? No. Reverse course, before your product ends up in the same place as github.
scrollaway 7y ago
I got Gitlab's email and immediately knew people would be freaking out about it. The fallacy of transparency: The more transparent you are, the more people think you're up to some shady shit. It's crazy.
- JohnFen 7y ago
  That's not the fallacy of transparency. The real fallacy is when companies think that doing shady shit is OK as long as they're transparent about it.
  - scrollaway 7y ago
    Someone's going to have to explain to me how Gitlab is doing something shady with this stuff. Unless I'm misreading all this, it all looks like very standard telemetry, the same kind Github is doing.
    - gbear605 7y ago
      Part of the issue is that proprietary software would be running from a company that advertises itself as being oriented around free software. In addition, it would apply to the enterprise deployments, which is bad because enterprises can’t allow telemetry for regulatory and security reasons.
      - scrollaway 7y ago
        > Part of the issue is that proprietary software would be running from a company that advertises itself as being oriented around free software. They're also running on Google's cloud, which is mostly proprietary software. And I can tell you right now they use the most-definitely-closed-source Salesforce for a lot of stuff. Do you think there's actually a significant amount of people who care about the license type of the internal tools of the companies they use?
        gbear605 7y ago

nurettin 7y ago

someone's git hosting service gets more signups because of bad PR by gitlab.

guiraldelli 7y ago
Sorry, but that's an understatement of what sourcehut.org is.