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~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. The
by pid-1 2y 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 2y agoI'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 2y agoFor 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 2y agoMy 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