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Gitlab is reportedly up for sale
- pyeri 2y agoNot a good development, some competition is always good in this space.
- rr808 2y agoDoes Datadog have a good remote policy? Will be interesting to see if any acquirer keeps it long term. edit: I guess they do https://careers.datadoghq.com/remote/ https://careers.datadoghq.com/remote/
- toomuchtodo 2y agoGood fit considering they’ve both embraced remote, preventing potential value destruction by an acquirer. DataDog also going big into cloud security recently with product releases, so perhaps a more engineering/dev focused Wiz “grow and roll up” play. DataDog and Gitlab combined would be worth almost $45B.
- moralestapia 2y agoM&A w/ Bitbucket could also be interesting. I don't dislike Github but prefer Bitbucket, I feel they're a bit underappreciated, in part due to the massive market share that Github has. This could help turn things around.
- tapoxi 2y agoBut their products are quite different. There's a large market that self-hosts GitLab for data soverignity reasons, and Datadog has no such offering. I'm a GitLab user, I can't use Datadog because our customer contracts forbid data leaving the system (PHI, BAA won't suffice). I would reconsider GitLab if they were acquired.
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- werrett 2y agoOut of interest -- Why put PHI in your SCM? If you're just wrangling code but not actual data SaaS should be kosher.
- tapoxi 2y agoWe don't put PHI in repos, the CI platform has access to the infrastructure to deploy, which means any potential compromise would expose PHI.
- cheepin 2y agoI recently had a recruiter from them email for hybrid positions with no remote so take that as you will Edit: 15 remote engineering positions open out of 219 total on their career site
- Meluhan 2y agoNo IBM?
- deleted 2y ago[deleted]
- tracerbulletx 2y agoWhy can so few medium sized software companies succeed in the long term anymore? Why does everything need to consolidate to just a few companies.
- toomuchtodo 2y agoBecause that’s the TAM without enterprise cross sell, which you only get once sucked up into the spaceship. Teams, GitHub, with Microsoft, Slack with Salesforce, Hashicorp with IBM, and so on. You either grind and love the grind, and make peace with your slice of the industry (Automattic [$7.5B value], for example) or you sell out and up when you get bored or tired.
- ThrowawayR2 2y agoI asked this elsewhere but didn't the founders show up on HN threads when Gitlab first launched and insist they had no plans to ever sell out?
- metaphor 2y agoSometimes life deals you a really bad hand[1]. [1] https://x.com/sytses/status/1797763994834600207 https://x.com/sytses/status/1797763994834600207
- toomuchtodo 2y agoAbsolutely terrible news to hear.
- rapsey 2y agoIf they take VC money there are only two possible end goals. Go public or get bought. VC investment needs to be payed back.
- toomuchtodo 2y agoGitlab went public October 14th, 2021. https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/GTLB/ https://finance.yahoo.com/quote/GTLB/ https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33208536 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=33208536 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28863993 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28863993
- keyle 2y agoIt's kind of a poisoned well situation. Whoever would purchase them would lead to the departure of many disgruntled users who basically were with Gitlab to stick it to Microsoft. I've also never felt compelled to use Gitlab. They literally offer no significant advantage other than being an alternative to Github. If I started over, I'd go with Drew's Sourcehut hub for the sake of actually shooting for something different. I don't really see who would pay $8B for this business which has no moat-future.
- levidos 2y agoAs DevOps engineer I've used and managed both Gitlab and Github extensively, and Gitlab is just so much better. Things make sense there. Shame that it's so darn expensive.
- cortesoft 2y agoAgreed, used to manage our GitHub enterprise and then lead the transition to Gitlab enterprise. Both cheaper and better, and open source.
- danpalmer 2y agoWhen you say managed, do you mean self hosting, or do you mean using the platforms for devops? I can see how GitHubs self hosting story might be worse, because it’s just not designed for that, most companies don’t do it anymore, and I believe the product is deprecated. As for doing devops from the platforms, I always found GitHub Actions better than GitLab CI, but I realise many feel the opposite.
- silisili 2y agoSame. Been using Gitlab for years, but joined a new company using Github. I was appalled by how bad everything is compared to Gitlab, but especially ci/runners vs actions.
- cyberpunk 2y agoDoes gh actions even support k8s native runners yet?
- xyst 2y agoEvery time GL is mentioned, I am reminded of the 2017 incident where a person 'rm -rf' the primary pg data logs. The reenactment by Kevin Fang is always a good source of comedy on a bad day. https://youtube.com/watch?v=tLdRBsuvVKc https://youtube.com/watch?v=tLdRBsuvVKc It’s a shame they are selling out, but I suppose it was bound to happen sooner or later. GH is vacuuming up all of the market share. I kind of liked the ability to self host my own GL. But for small/personal use cases. It was a bit overkill.
- taspeotis 2y agoAlso the hoops they jump through to avoid “pull request” even though the term is native to Git. Like did calling it a “merge request” trick everyone into believing they weren’t a GitHub clone in the early days?
- OccamsMirror 2y agoIn fairness, "merge request" is easier to understand.
- vander_elst 2y agoI think merge vs pull is a different development workflow, which might appeal different organizations, tbh I never liked much the need of forking the entire repository to be able to contribute. Gerrit also doesn't require you to fork the repo first. Anyway, from my perspective that's s feature that GL provides vs GH, not just marketing.
- commodoreboxer 2y ago"pull request" isn't really native to git. "pull" is. A pull request is literally sending somebody a message and requesting that they pull a branch from your fork and merge it. A "pull request" in GitHub doesn't really do a pull under the covers at all. "pull request" is a more recognizable term, but "merge request" is more technically accurate for what GitHub and GitLab do. And is it really jumping through hoops to just name it something different? I usually think of that phrase as implying something more arduous.
- davidandgoliath 2y agoAnyone is contemplating this should sincerely reconsider.
- sebastiennight 2y agoAs a small startup I know I'm not really their core buyer, but I absolutely love Gitlab. It's a bit worrying to think about the impact a purchase/merger might have on the product. What the article doesn't make clear is how much of the company capital is public? If the founder owns 45% of voting shares and Google/Alphabet has 22%, are only 33% of the shares actually on the public markets?
- pas 2y agoYes. So in effect this means that - conditional on the bylaws - they (a coalition of majority shareholders) can agree to deals without doing (proxy) votes. But since it's a public company the deal has to be fair to all (!) shareholders too. (And usually that's why a vote is "nice to have", but not sufficient. See the case of Tesla and Elon's compensation package, where laws protecting those who voted no on the package will override the shareholder vote. [thought it's pending appeal, etc.])
- HexDecOctBin 2y agoIs there any self-hostable software that supports both Git and SVN?
- NetOpWibby 2y agoSourceHut, I think.
- Stuffing6410 2y agoScm-manager [https://scm-manager.org/ https://scm-manager.org/]
- Dunedan 2y agoThere is also git-as-svn, which provides access to a git repository through SVN: https://git-as-svn.github.io/git-as-svn/htmlsingle/git-as-svn.html https://git-as-svn.github.io/git-as-svn/htmlsingle/git-as-sv...
- Lammy 2y agoPhorge https://we.phorge.it/ https://we.phorge.it/ Also supports Hg.
- HexDecOctBin 2y agoThis looks like a Phabricator fork? Is it under active development?
- alanwreath 2y agoI wonder what it means to the government use of it. Every government entity I’ve seen thus far uses gitlab. And I’m guessing because self hosting critical.
- Proven 2y ago[dead]
- veltas 2y agoMany companies have no choice but to self-host to comply with export control regulations. We use GitLab and drool over GitHub the whole time. But this is one advantage for GitLab, fundamentally we won't use GitHub because we need to control the data ourselves. Think for example of the defence industry, it's a big deal.
- mcpherrinm 2y agoGitHub has a self-hosted version of their enterprise product for that market: https://docs.github.com/en/enterprise-server@3.14/admin/overview/about-github-enterprise-server https://docs.github.com/en/enterprise-server@3.14/admin/over...
- brnt 2y agoWhat does that get you over Gitlab CE?
- hoofhearted 2y agoYou can self host it on your own stack and subdomain; completely segmented away from the public GitHub application.
- brnt 2y agoThe question was what it gets you over Gitlab CE.
- dijit 2y agoGitlabs increased revenues are only due to price hiking and removing of lower tiers. For example my bill with no additional needed features has risen from 6€ per user per month or so to €29 in something like 2-3 years. I’m sure any serious buyer would look through that and realise some major churn is about to happen as renewals hit. - especially as they will be wanting customer/rev growth.
- pas 2y agosure, but DataDog is a professional extortist, they know what they are buying (if they are in fact buying) :)
- LarsDu88 2y agoAt my last job, I joined right when the company switched from Github to Gitlab. That right there should've been a massive red flag
- guappa 2y agoYou think companies make money when everyone has to take a nap because github is down as usual?
- wtcactus 2y agoI've worked - like everyone else here, I believe - extensively with GitHub in the past, as it was the de facto standard 1 decade ago. Then, about 5 years ago I started working in a company that went the GitLab way, specifically due to the CI/CD support they provided directly in the platform. At first, I didn't like the change so much, but as the project kept going, and we invested more and more in CI/CD, I can't see any going back. There's just nothing in GitHub that would allow us this kind of control and flexibly and automation over the build/testing/release process. I get it if for your own personal development you prefer GitHub (I still do), but for anything of a medium/big size that's willing to invest time and money into a fully automated release process, GitLab is the way. And I guess that's where the value of GitLab to investors lies, in its appeal to the enterprise sector.
- layer8 2y agoNot everyone works extensively with GitHub, especially outside SV culture. I only do when I must.
- NewJazz 2y agoI really hope they don't sell. They really fucked up their pricing. There is such a steep cliff to climb these days. Literally starts at $30/user/month. You can almost get GitHub enterprise and Copilot for that price. But their open core model, fully remote organizational structure, and overall product quality is highly valuable. How many open source distros self-host GitLab? Debian, Arch, Alpine, postmarketOS, any I'm missing? Then GNOME, KDE, and free desktop have their own instances. How many companies self-host or use gitlab.com? There is real value and momentum there. Would be a shame to succumb to impatience and AI frenzy. I doubt datadog can steward the project in the same way.
- physicsguy 2y agoI like GitLab's product but I don't like the developments they've made in the last few years. It seemed to me to have been captured by too many product managers trying to make a name for themselves and became less of a cohesive user interface/feature set. The cost kept going up as they hired more and more people.
- moltar 2y agoI think AWS should buy it. Given they just deprecated CodeCommit.
- okokwhatever 2y agoInsightful
- lrvick 2y agoSelf host Forgejo and truck on with all the same features in a tiny footprint. Gitlab has always been massive bloat that takes way too many people to maintain, and way too many resources to deploy. Not to mention proprietary feature gating that is a major turn-off to community contributions.
- mv4 2y agoCompanies are bought, not sold.
- jmclnx 2y agoGreat, I just moved my items to gitlab. I wonder how long the new owners will add AI, Copilot, 2FA and other crap to their site. I went github -> back to RCS and anon ftp -> just now to gitlab I guess it is back to RCS and anon ftp. FWIW, I would expect IBM to grab gitlab if it is really up for sale.
- yjftsjthsd-h 2y ago> I guess it is back to RCS and anon ftp. Why would that be the conclusion? By all means self-host, but you can self-host git (including just bare git on a server cloned over ssh) and it'll suck less than going back to rcs.
- theappsecguy 2y agoHopefully someone decent buys it and reshapes the direction without major layoffs. I use GitHub because there is no compelling reason not to and that’s what we have at work. But GitHub is stagnating and I have the idea of them having even more market share. Their AI propaganda is also insane.
- glub103011 2y ago[dead]
- olgeni 2y agoImagine Broadcom getting it :D