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A half-assed feature nobody asked for? In my Gitlab?! Unbelievable!! On a serious note, wtf Gitlab? Every once in a while I get an email notification from a fe

by bogwog 3y ago

A half-assed feature nobody asked for? In my Gitlab?! Unbelievable!! On a serious note, wtf Gitlab? Every once in a while I get an email notification from a feature request I subscribed to (that has been open for years) because yet another large premium customer requests that it be implemented. Gitlabs response is always that they don't have capacity/manpower to implement it, yet they're able to implement crap like this?

sdesol 3y ago
> A half-assed feature nobody asked for? I'll put money on it that Enterprise customers asked for this. The half-assed part, I can't comment on.
andybak 3y ago
Are your features potentially new revenue streams? This is. Or at least they believe it can be.
- richbell 3y ago
  I'm sure their investors believe announcing something with "AI" will increase the value.
- pid-1 3y ago
  ~5 years ago GitLab had many features that distinguished itself from competition, chiefly their CI/CD stuff. It was leagues above of what everyone offered. They've spent the last years building stuff I don't care while not improving the stuff I care. During this period, GitHub built Actions. Nowadays GitLab is more expensive than GitHub (GitLab Premium vs GitHub Enterprise) while also not having any particular feature that makes me want to use it over GitHub. If I was starting a software team today, there is no reason I'd be using GitLab. In the long term their strategy of having too many half assed features might bite back instead of generating revenue streams.
  - mdaniel 3y ago
    I'll also observe that several years ago they weren't a public company, and if my mental model of public companies is correct then they have a fiduciary duty to maximize shareholder value, not software engineering teams value from their product
    - pid-1 3y ago
      For most companies maximizing shareholder value and making customers happy are highly correlated. No amount of AI features will save their stock performance if their customer base stalls. Broadcom-like companies (monopoly) and Google-like companies (you are the product bla bla bla) are exeptions though.
      - mdaniel 3y ago
        My further life experience has been that markets are highly irrational, and as the other comments have said: if the shareholders believe AI is the bandwagon, and implementing Conan repository support is "well, churn gonna happen" then that's how one ends up with this bullshit
keybored 3y ago
I don’t know if this is half-assed. But the presentation certainly is. Why Gitlab Duo : AI :sparkles:
- yjftsjthsd-h 3y ago
  I don't know, isn't that exactly explanation of why they did it? (Joking but also 100% dead serious)
candiddevmike 3y ago
I wrote a (satirical?) blog post about this behavior: https://candid.dev/blog/becoming-an-ai-company/ https://candid.dev/blog/becoming-an-ai-company/ Every company seems to be throwing their backlog away and focusing on adding AI features no one asked for. Could be a lot of opportunity for startups that actually listen to their end users to gain some traction instead of chasing GenAI.
- bogwog 3y ago
  > Could be a lot of opportunity for startups that actually listen to their end users to gain some traction instead of chasing GenAI. This made me actually look into it instead of just complaining on the internet. The feature I was referring to was the Conan package repository[1]. Apparently, Forgejo implemented support for that already[2], as well as other features that originally drew me to Gitlab in the first place. I think it may be time to consider switching. 1: https://gitlab.com/groups/gitlab-org/-/epics/6816 https://gitlab.com/groups/gitlab-org/-/epics/6816 2: https://forgejo.org/docs/latest/user/packages/conan/ https://forgejo.org/docs/latest/user/packages/conan/

by bogwog 3y ago

sdesol 3y ago

> A half-assed feature nobody asked for? I'll put money on it that Enterprise customers asked for this. The half-assed part, I can't comment on.

andybak 3y ago

Are your features potentially new revenue streams? This is. Or at least they believe it can be.

richbell 3y ago
I'm sure their investors believe announcing something with "AI" will increase the value.
pid-1 3y ago
~5 years ago GitLab had many features that distinguished itself from competition, chiefly their CI/CD stuff. It was leagues above of what everyone offered. They've spent the last years building stuff I don't care while not improving the stuff I care. During this period, GitHub built Actions. Nowadays GitLab is more expensive than GitHub (GitLab Premium vs GitHub Enterprise) while also not having any particular feature that makes me want to use it over GitHub. If I was starting a software team today, there is no reason I'd be using GitLab. In the long term their strategy of having too many half assed features might bite back instead of generating revenue streams.
- mdaniel 3y ago
  I'll also observe that several years ago they weren't a public company, and if my mental model of public companies is correct then they have a fiduciary duty to maximize shareholder value, not software engineering teams value from their product
  - pid-1 3y ago
    For most companies maximizing shareholder value and making customers happy are highly correlated. No amount of AI features will save their stock performance if their customer base stalls. Broadcom-like companies (monopoly) and Google-like companies (you are the product bla bla bla) are exeptions though.
    - mdaniel 3y ago
      My further life experience has been that markets are highly irrational, and as the other comments have said: if the shareholders believe AI is the bandwagon, and implementing Conan repository support is "well, churn gonna happen" then that's how one ends up with this bullshit

keybored 3y ago

I don’t know if this is half-assed. But the presentation certainly is. Why Gitlab Duo : AI :sparkles:

yjftsjthsd-h 3y ago
I don't know, isn't that exactly explanation of why they did it? (Joking but also 100% dead serious)

candiddevmike 3y ago

I wrote a (satirical?) blog post about this behavior: https://candid.dev/blog/becoming-an-ai-company/ https://candid.dev/blog/becoming-an-ai-company/ Every company seems to be throwing their backlog away and focusing on adding AI features no one asked for. Could be a lot of opportunity for startups that actually listen to their end users to gain some traction instead of chasing GenAI.

bogwog 3y ago
> Could be a lot of opportunity for startups that actually listen to their end users to gain some traction instead of chasing GenAI. This made me actually look into it instead of just complaining on the internet. The feature I was referring to was the Conan package repository[1]. Apparently, Forgejo implemented support for that already[2], as well as other features that originally drew me to Gitlab in the first place. I think it may be time to consider switching. 1: https://gitlab.com/groups/gitlab-org/-/epics/6816 https://gitlab.com/groups/gitlab-org/-/epics/6816 2: https://forgejo.org/docs/latest/user/packages/conan/ https://forgejo.org/docs/latest/user/packages/conan/