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I like many things Gitlab does: open-sources most of their product, publishes their documentation openly, promotes remote work. I strongly dislike some of the

I like many things Gitlab does: open-sources most of their product, publishes their documentation openly, promotes remote work. I strongly dislike some of the things that Github does: suck up open-source code and re-sell it through Copilot, stifle competition by offering free services that their non-MS-owned competitors can't afford to offer. I don't think either one is purely good or purely evil. Overall, I like both companies better than average, but I'd rather support Gitlab.

hawaiianbrah 4y ago
GitHub also promotes remote work. Most of the company is remote and will always be remote.
- mtlynch 4y ago
  That's fair, but I think Gitlab promotes it more strongly. They're 100% remote, and they publish guides teaching other companies how to replicate their remote-first setup: https://about.gitlab.com/company/culture/all-remote/guide/ https://about.gitlab.com/company/culture/all-remote/guide/
  - inferiorhuman 4y ago
    I interviewed with Github recently (a pretty mediocre experience overall) and it seemed like they've fully committed to remote work. They don't even bother with on site onboarding anymore.
    - hawaiianbrah 4y ago
      GitHub has been fully committed to remote work for years before the pandemic. I suspect they’ll bring back on site onboarding at some point, but maybe not. Sorry to hear your interview experience was mediocre. They’ve been tweaking it, and not for the better in my opinion.
  - soneca 4y ago
    Gitlab advocates for paying local salaries. That’s actually against my “philosophy“ as you put it, as it is against my direct interest, being a non-US based software developer. Their way to promote remote work is, ironically, hurtful to my prospects as a remote worker.
    - CSMastermind 4y ago
      Yeah location based salary discrimination is one of the biggest issues in our industry in my opinion. I'm really hoping that the move to more remote-forward working cultures spurred by Covid will lead to this being corrected.
    - forty 4y ago
      Overpaying remote workers compared to the local market is bad as it create distortion of local markets (on housing especially where local non remote workers cannot afford living where they work). (I'm a remote worker outside of the US and my personal interest would be to be paid more, but I don't believe it would be the general interest)
      - Benjamin_Dobell 4y ago
        This line of reasoning doesn't consider equity, and the fact that people want to move - especially out of low socioeconomic areas. If you're paid a local wage, there's basically no way you'd ever be able to relocate to somewhere more expensive since selling your house wouldn't put a dent in the price of a home elsewhere.
        inferiorhuman 4y ago
        Sure, but paying a high wage relative to the local prevailing wage is different than paying the same high wage everywhere. Part of the problem in the Bay Area is that tech companies distorted the local wages so dramatically.
        criley2 4y ago
bloppe 4y ago
The co-pilot concern I get. I think the root of the problem is that everybody seems to have almost signed away their copyright to GitHub as part of their terms of service: https://fossa.com/blog/analyzing-legal-implications-github-copilot/ https://fossa.com/blog/analyzing-legal-implications-github-c... "If you look at the GitHub Terms of Service, no matter what license you use, you give GitHub the right to host your code and to use your code to improve their products and features"... yeesh I don't really agree with the concern that they "stifle competition by offering free services that their non-MS-owned competitors can't afford to offer". GitLab is clearly able to differentiate with with their terms of service, as evidenced by your and others' comments here. I don't fault the vast majority of FOSS developers, especially those using permissive MIT-style licenses, for favoring cost-efficiency over control. It's good to have both options.
IfOnlyYouKnew 4y ago
I feel GitHub is the best thing that ever happened to the Open Source Community. Before, it was freshmeat and, for collaboration, arbitrary mailing lists each enforcing their same "standards" to send in patches. I can only assume the process was sometimes smooth, sometimes terrible. In any case: I never did it. In the GitHub era, I have regularly made pull requests. Small ones on a maybe weekly basis, larger ones twice a year or so. I feel confident in the estimate that the number of contributors has grown by at least an order of magnitude, and that GitHub was a significant factor in this development. Gitlab, meanwhile, started out as so obvious a clone their CSS still had classes named "gh-large-..." months after launch. Then, they would frequently have the audacity to complain when GitHub copied some minor feature they had first implemented.
- dijit 4y ago
  Github is social media for code; which is great for discovering things or fly-by addons.. Social media in the workplace is not as great, ask anyone using facebooks communication platform: https://www.workplace.com https://www.workplace.com I much prefer working with gitlab as a product 9hours a day on internal systems.
  - bschwindHN 4y ago
    Github is nowhere close to "social media in the workplace". I use github every day and the only time I interact with people I don't know is if I'm submitting a patch to another project I use. Comparing it to facebook workplace is weird.
oxff 4y ago
> Stifle competition by offering free services that their non-MS-owned competitors can't afford to offer. This is quite absurd complaint, is it not?

hawaiianbrah 4y ago

GitHub also promotes remote work. Most of the company is remote and will always be remote.

mtlynch 4y ago
That's fair, but I think Gitlab promotes it more strongly. They're 100% remote, and they publish guides teaching other companies how to replicate their remote-first setup: https://about.gitlab.com/company/culture/all-remote/guide/ https://about.gitlab.com/company/culture/all-remote/guide/
- inferiorhuman 4y ago
  I interviewed with Github recently (a pretty mediocre experience overall) and it seemed like they've fully committed to remote work. They don't even bother with on site onboarding anymore.
  - hawaiianbrah 4y ago
    GitHub has been fully committed to remote work for years before the pandemic. I suspect they’ll bring back on site onboarding at some point, but maybe not. Sorry to hear your interview experience was mediocre. They’ve been tweaking it, and not for the better in my opinion.
- soneca 4y ago
  Gitlab advocates for paying local salaries. That’s actually against my “philosophy“ as you put it, as it is against my direct interest, being a non-US based software developer. Their way to promote remote work is, ironically, hurtful to my prospects as a remote worker.
  - CSMastermind 4y ago
    Yeah location based salary discrimination is one of the biggest issues in our industry in my opinion. I'm really hoping that the move to more remote-forward working cultures spurred by Covid will lead to this being corrected.
  - forty 4y ago
    Overpaying remote workers compared to the local market is bad as it create distortion of local markets (on housing especially where local non remote workers cannot afford living where they work). (I'm a remote worker outside of the US and my personal interest would be to be paid more, but I don't believe it would be the general interest)
    - Benjamin_Dobell 4y ago
      This line of reasoning doesn't consider equity, and the fact that people want to move - especially out of low socioeconomic areas. If you're paid a local wage, there's basically no way you'd ever be able to relocate to somewhere more expensive since selling your house wouldn't put a dent in the price of a home elsewhere.
      - inferiorhuman 4y ago
        Sure, but paying a high wage relative to the local prevailing wage is different than paying the same high wage everywhere. Part of the problem in the Bay Area is that tech companies distorted the local wages so dramatically.
        criley2 4y ago

bloppe 4y ago

The co-pilot concern I get. I think the root of the problem is that everybody seems to have almost signed away their copyright to GitHub as part of their terms of service: https://fossa.com/blog/analyzing-legal-implications-github-copilot/ https://fossa.com/blog/analyzing-legal-implications-github-c... "If you look at the GitHub Terms of Service, no matter what license you use, you give GitHub the right to host your code and to use your code to improve their products and features"... yeesh I don't really agree with the concern that they "stifle competition by offering free services that their non-MS-owned competitors can't afford to offer". GitLab is clearly able to differentiate with with their terms of service, as evidenced by your and others' comments here. I don't fault the vast majority of FOSS developers, especially those using permissive MIT-style licenses, for favoring cost-efficiency over control. It's good to have both options.

IfOnlyYouKnew 4y ago

I feel GitHub is the best thing that ever happened to the Open Source Community. Before, it was freshmeat and, for collaboration, arbitrary mailing lists each enforcing their same "standards" to send in patches. I can only assume the process was sometimes smooth, sometimes terrible. In any case: I never did it. In the GitHub era, I have regularly made pull requests. Small ones on a maybe weekly basis, larger ones twice a year or so. I feel confident in the estimate that the number of contributors has grown by at least an order of magnitude, and that GitHub was a significant factor in this development. Gitlab, meanwhile, started out as so obvious a clone their CSS still had classes named "gh-large-..." months after launch. Then, they would frequently have the audacity to complain when GitHub copied some minor feature they had first implemented.

dijit 4y ago
Github is social media for code; which is great for discovering things or fly-by addons.. Social media in the workplace is not as great, ask anyone using facebooks communication platform: https://www.workplace.com https://www.workplace.com I much prefer working with gitlab as a product 9hours a day on internal systems.
- bschwindHN 4y ago
  Github is nowhere close to "social media in the workplace". I use github every day and the only time I interact with people I don't know is if I'm submitting a patch to another project I use. Comparing it to facebook workplace is weird.

oxff 4y ago

> Stifle competition by offering free services that their non-MS-owned competitors can't afford to offer. This is quite absurd complaint, is it not?