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Work at GitLab, we've halted any movement on adding telemetry and are reconsidering our approach. More info is on this issue: https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/grow

Work at GitLab, we've halted any movement on adding telemetry and are reconsidering our approach. More info is on this issue: https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/growth/product/issues/164 https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/growth/product/issues/164

bpchaps 7y ago
Has anyone at gitlab told you to post here? The level of defensiveness reminds me a lot of the creepy Amazon fulfilment center twitter accounts. Edit: Why the downvotes? It's a serious question.
- RussianCow 7y ago
  Their job title according to their profile is "Senior Community Advocate", so I would say that it's part of their job to post here.
  - bpchaps 7y ago
    Ah. Is that any different from a "Fulfillment Center Ambassador"?
    - xapata 7y ago
      Yes. BTW, not everyone knows what "FC" is an abbreviation for.
    - emilycook 7y ago
      I don't know what that means, but this is the handbook page on my position: https://about.gitlab.com/handbook/marketing/community-relations/community-advocacy/ https://about.gitlab.com/handbook/marketing/community-relati... although I've been needing to update it a bit. My job is to basically relay feedback to the rest of the company, and relay any information back to you all that might be relevant. We don't wanna be out-of-touch with what people are really saying about us, and we wanna make sure you're input is received, so that's basically why my team exists.
      - bpchaps 7y ago
        My questions come from the fact that you, and others from Gitlab, are coming out of the woodwork in groups in response to public negativity and trying to play it cool, eg "wanna". At least to me, it feels hollow, just like your response right now. It makes me think that Gitlab knew that there was going to be a backlash, and only sent your team out to mitigate damages. "There is no such thing as bad publicity" sort of deal. If Amazon did the same thing you were doing right now, everyone would be up in arms.
        RussianCow 7y ago
        I think you're reading too far into it. GitLab announced something and received a ton of backlash for it, so they are understandably trying to minimize damage.
        bpchaps 7y ago
        It was more than an announcement. They cutoff access to gitlab and broke automated workflows. It shows that they don't know their customer base that well if they were willing to do that. Surely they knew they'd break automated workflows? So, either they don't care that they broke those workflows when they made this change, or they didn't know that the workflow breakage would be bad. Both are shitty and implies a lack of understanding of their core user base. So, sending customer reps out like they are now screams to me that gitlab really only cares about presentation.
        emilycook 7y ago
        It is the feedback from you all that is responsible for us rolling back the ToS and reconsidering our approach to this. My job, genuinely, is to relay concerns back to the people who make decisions like this. Sid has said in another comment that he wasn't expecting praise, but didn't expect the backlash to be this bad. If they were I really wish they would've given me a heads-up
        gpm 7y ago
        It's not really "coming out of the woodwork" tbh, Gitlab has always been incredibly active on HN, largely through their CEO sytse.
- gilrain 7y ago
  I agree the huge amount of copy-and-pasted or otherwise hollow responses from GitLab employees here and on their issue is annoying and counterproductive, but it's literally their jobs. Push back against GitLab, not their rank-and-file. It's undoubtedly a rough job.
packetlost 7y ago
Can you provide some insight onto what 'telemetry data' is being collected and what the data is being used for? Edit: I don't think telemetry is always bad. Obfuscated telemetry tells me you're potentially collecting stuff that you don't want me to know about, but things like clicks, mouse-movements, etc. are important for understanding how users use a service and not inherently bad.
- sytse 7y ago
  Thanks, we'll make sure to detail what data is collected when we rethrought our plans.
- circuitswan 7y ago
  Hello - what we currently collect is here - https://about.gitlab.com/handbook/product/feature-instrumentation/ https://about.gitlab.com/handbook/product/feature-instrument... and we of course will update that in the future to reflect the details of any telemetry we use - however as noted the team is circling back to evaluate all the feedback and concerns before considering how to improve our existing telemetry (which was the goal).
vips7L 7y ago
Did you guys not expect any type of backlash about telemetry? Do you guys not read comments here at all?
- sytse 7y ago
  We didn't expect praise but many more people expressed concern than we expected.
  - eitland 7y ago
    "Express concern" is a large understatement IMO. Edit: removed most of the post. Rewrote the rest of it.
    - neonate 7y ago
      FWIW I liked and appreciated the earlier version.
  - neonate 7y ago
    You need to contain this disaster now by showing unambiguously that you've heard the community and announcing that you're simply not going to do this. This is an existential risk for you. You've just unintentionally shot your own brand; it needs more than a little first aid. Talking evasively ("concerns") is undermining you further. These things have a super short half life before people just write you off as untrustworthy. But if you reverse it quickly enough, you can turn it into a win. Do it now! The hourglass is getting to that point where there's just a little sand left and it feels like it's starting to accelerate. Please listen to these comments. There are a lot of them: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21345596 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21345596 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21346723 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21346723
    - sytse 7y ago
      There are multiple decisions: opt-in vs. opt-out, GitLab.com vs. self-hosted, DNT vs. in-app, first-party vs. third-party, aggregated data vs. user data. As an example that we won't do opt-out self-hosted third party with user data doesn't mean we can't do opt-in GitLab.com first party with aggregated data. Almost every SaaS company uses telemetry in some form to improve their product. We need it too to improve the the user experience of the product. But we clearly made the wrong trade-offs so we'll go back to square one and make a new plan.
zajd 7y ago
Do you really think anyone is naive enough to believe this sort of thing won't become the norm? It's pretty clear GitLab has drank from the poisoned well. Your CFO is making these sorts of decisions, not developers. Good luck with the business, but I'm out.
esotericn 7y ago
Drew's comment there explains the fundamental issue. > Drew DeVault @ddevault · 1 hour ago > Obligatory disclaimer: I work for a GitLab competitor. >Thank you for pumping the brakes, but this is still not great news. This language is the classic "defuse, wait, and try again later" approach to shoeing in unpopular changes. You're still hedging their bets with this language, rather than renouncing the original ideas. A similar tactic we've already seen is apologising for "bad communication" instead of the real problem: bad changes. Until a real apology is issued and the changes renounced, this isn't very meaningful. "Reconsidering the approach" is CYA talk. What you're doing right now is an attempt at damage limitation instead of fixing the actual problem. Third party telemetry is a cancer that no-one wants. You, personally, don't even want it. You know you don't want it, but you're adopting the 'corporate mask'. Just stop, please. For your own good, as well as that of the wider ecosystem.
joncp 7y ago
Backpedaling due to bad PR does not reestablish trust. Gitlab has demonstrated that they're willing to breach trust if they can get away with it. They're dead to me.
JumpCrisscross 7y ago
> we've halted any movement on adding telemetry and are reconsidering our approach Your firm communicated a willingness to break users’ tools, wilfully violate GDPR, and interrupt users’ business continuity, all to spice up some IPO metrics. That’s a lot of trust to rebuild. I’d recommend putting guarantees against telemetry into your ToS. Also, a minimum announcement period before mandatory ToS revisions and a minimum amount of time before GitLab can nix users for not agreeing to a new ToS.
semiotagonal 7y ago
One thing worth considering is the possibility that the type of user that migrates from GitHub to GitLab on the basis of GitHub's lack of "purity" is going to perceive any "impurity" in GitLab not merely as a change, but as a betrayal.

bpchaps 7y ago

Has anyone at gitlab told you to post here? The level of defensiveness reminds me a lot of the creepy Amazon fulfilment center twitter accounts. Edit: Why the downvotes? It's a serious question.

RussianCow 7y ago
Their job title according to their profile is "Senior Community Advocate", so I would say that it's part of their job to post here.
- bpchaps 7y ago
  Ah. Is that any different from a "Fulfillment Center Ambassador"?
  - xapata 7y ago
    Yes. BTW, not everyone knows what "FC" is an abbreviation for.
  - emilycook 7y ago
    I don't know what that means, but this is the handbook page on my position: https://about.gitlab.com/handbook/marketing/community-relations/community-advocacy/ https://about.gitlab.com/handbook/marketing/community-relati... although I've been needing to update it a bit. My job is to basically relay feedback to the rest of the company, and relay any information back to you all that might be relevant. We don't wanna be out-of-touch with what people are really saying about us, and we wanna make sure you're input is received, so that's basically why my team exists.
    - bpchaps 7y ago
      My questions come from the fact that you, and others from Gitlab, are coming out of the woodwork in groups in response to public negativity and trying to play it cool, eg "wanna". At least to me, it feels hollow, just like your response right now. It makes me think that Gitlab knew that there was going to be a backlash, and only sent your team out to mitigate damages. "There is no such thing as bad publicity" sort of deal. If Amazon did the same thing you were doing right now, everyone would be up in arms.
      - RussianCow 7y ago
        I think you're reading too far into it. GitLab announced something and received a ton of backlash for it, so they are understandably trying to minimize damage.
        bpchaps 7y ago
        It was more than an announcement. They cutoff access to gitlab and broke automated workflows. It shows that they don't know their customer base that well if they were willing to do that. Surely they knew they'd break automated workflows? So, either they don't care that they broke those workflows when they made this change, or they didn't know that the workflow breakage would be bad. Both are shitty and implies a lack of understanding of their core user base. So, sending customer reps out like they are now screams to me that gitlab really only cares about presentation.
      - emilycook 7y ago
        It is the feedback from you all that is responsible for us rolling back the ToS and reconsidering our approach to this. My job, genuinely, is to relay concerns back to the people who make decisions like this. Sid has said in another comment that he wasn't expecting praise, but didn't expect the backlash to be this bad. If they were I really wish they would've given me a heads-up
      - gpm 7y ago
        It's not really "coming out of the woodwork" tbh, Gitlab has always been incredibly active on HN, largely through their CEO sytse.
gilrain 7y ago
I agree the huge amount of copy-and-pasted or otherwise hollow responses from GitLab employees here and on their issue is annoying and counterproductive, but it's literally their jobs. Push back against GitLab, not their rank-and-file. It's undoubtedly a rough job.

packetlost 7y ago

Can you provide some insight onto what 'telemetry data' is being collected and what the data is being used for? Edit: I don't think telemetry is always bad. Obfuscated telemetry tells me you're potentially collecting stuff that you don't want me to know about, but things like clicks, mouse-movements, etc. are important for understanding how users use a service and not inherently bad.

sytse 7y ago
Thanks, we'll make sure to detail what data is collected when we rethrought our plans.
circuitswan 7y ago
Hello - what we currently collect is here - https://about.gitlab.com/handbook/product/feature-instrumentation/ https://about.gitlab.com/handbook/product/feature-instrument... and we of course will update that in the future to reflect the details of any telemetry we use - however as noted the team is circling back to evaluate all the feedback and concerns before considering how to improve our existing telemetry (which was the goal).

vips7L 7y ago

Did you guys not expect any type of backlash about telemetry? Do you guys not read comments here at all?

sytse 7y ago
We didn't expect praise but many more people expressed concern than we expected.
- eitland 7y ago
  "Express concern" is a large understatement IMO. Edit: removed most of the post. Rewrote the rest of it.
  - neonate 7y ago
    FWIW I liked and appreciated the earlier version.
- neonate 7y ago
  You need to contain this disaster now by showing unambiguously that you've heard the community and announcing that you're simply not going to do this. This is an existential risk for you. You've just unintentionally shot your own brand; it needs more than a little first aid. Talking evasively ("concerns") is undermining you further. These things have a super short half life before people just write you off as untrustworthy. But if you reverse it quickly enough, you can turn it into a win. Do it now! The hourglass is getting to that point where there's just a little sand left and it feels like it's starting to accelerate. Please listen to these comments. There are a lot of them: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21345596 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21345596 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21346723 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21346723
  - sytse 7y ago
    There are multiple decisions: opt-in vs. opt-out, GitLab.com vs. self-hosted, DNT vs. in-app, first-party vs. third-party, aggregated data vs. user data. As an example that we won't do opt-out self-hosted third party with user data doesn't mean we can't do opt-in GitLab.com first party with aggregated data. Almost every SaaS company uses telemetry in some form to improve their product. We need it too to improve the the user experience of the product. But we clearly made the wrong trade-offs so we'll go back to square one and make a new plan.

zajd 7y ago

Do you really think anyone is naive enough to believe this sort of thing won't become the norm? It's pretty clear GitLab has drank from the poisoned well. Your CFO is making these sorts of decisions, not developers. Good luck with the business, but I'm out.

esotericn 7y ago

Drew's comment there explains the fundamental issue. > Drew DeVault @ddevault · 1 hour ago > Obligatory disclaimer: I work for a GitLab competitor. >Thank you for pumping the brakes, but this is still not great news. This language is the classic "defuse, wait, and try again later" approach to shoeing in unpopular changes. You're still hedging their bets with this language, rather than renouncing the original ideas. A similar tactic we've already seen is apologising for "bad communication" instead of the real problem: bad changes. Until a real apology is issued and the changes renounced, this isn't very meaningful. "Reconsidering the approach" is CYA talk. What you're doing right now is an attempt at damage limitation instead of fixing the actual problem. Third party telemetry is a cancer that no-one wants. You, personally, don't even want it. You know you don't want it, but you're adopting the 'corporate mask'. Just stop, please. For your own good, as well as that of the wider ecosystem.

joncp 7y ago

Backpedaling due to bad PR does not reestablish trust. Gitlab has demonstrated that they're willing to breach trust if they can get away with it. They're dead to me.

JumpCrisscross 7y ago

> we've halted any movement on adding telemetry and are reconsidering our approach Your firm communicated a willingness to break users’ tools, wilfully violate GDPR, and interrupt users’ business continuity, all to spice up some IPO metrics. That’s a lot of trust to rebuild. I’d recommend putting guarantees against telemetry into your ToS. Also, a minimum announcement period before mandatory ToS revisions and a minimum amount of time before GitLab can nix users for not agreeing to a new ToS.

semiotagonal 7y ago

One thing worth considering is the possibility that the type of user that migrates from GitHub to GitLab on the basis of GitHub's lack of "purity" is going to perceive any "impurity" in GitLab not merely as a change, but as a betrayal.