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GitLab doesn't really make sense as an independent company. Horrific outcomes: Atlassian, Oracle, or IBM buys it. Great outcomes: Google, Amazon, or JetBrains

GitLab doesn't really make sense as an independent company. Horrific outcomes: Atlassian, Oracle, or IBM buys it. Great outcomes: Google, Amazon, or JetBrains ($7B private valuation) buys it.

griomnib 2y ago
Eh, Google it goes to the graveyard (rip Google code), Amazon it gets buried, JetBrains would be cool tho.
- adastra22 2y ago
  Better comparison for Google would be YouTube.
  - griomnib 2y ago
    Yes but that’s also pre-Sundar Google when there was some semblance of vision. Now that Ruth runs the company behind the scenes with a vision timeline that is measured in exactly 3 month increments…well, good luck.
- echelon 2y ago
  Some of Google's best business units were acquisitions. YouTube, Google Maps/Earth, Android, DoubeClick, DeepMind, Firebase, HTC (Pixel) Don't discount Google's M&A game.
  - griomnib 2y ago
    They kill more than they allow to live, and doubleclick slowly hollowed out Google search by skewing incentives away from great content to maximizing display revenue via link bait. Doubleclick is to Google what McDonald Douglas’s is to Boeing.
  - mrpippy 2y ago
    Don’t forget Docs (Wordly)
  - evilduck 2y ago
    Are any of those from the last decade? They acquired them when they were a different company.
- acdha 2y ago
  Amazon has an okay but underwhelming developer suite. If they bought Gitlab and did nothing other than say that they should have first class support for AWS deployments it’d be a good move, and that’s before you consider things like pivoting Gitlab’s struggling AI tools to theirs or aligning all of the supply-chain stuff big companies want.
  - jonstewart 2y ago
    CodeBuild asks so much and gives so little.
  - cmckn 2y ago
    CodeCommit is on the way out, onboarding was disabled over the summer. https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/devops/how-to-migrate-your-aws-codecommit-repository-to-another-git-provider/ https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/devops/how-to-migrate-your-aws-...
- morgante 2y ago
  I wouldn't consign it to the graveyard that quickly. It's a lot easier/more common for Google to kill internal projects and small acquisitions. A $16B write-down is far less likely, especially when many Googlers internally realize how much a threat Microsoft is with GitHub + VS Code.
mrweasel 2y ago
Why would Google want it? They shutdown Google code and Amazon is shutting down CodeCommit. I think it would make more sense for a number of companies to invest in Gitlab, to ensure that there is a 3rd. party tool available, as to not "force" users into the hands of Github and Microsoft. That's probably the best case, Google, Amazon, IBM, JetBrains and a few others create a company, with themselves on the board, and tasks that company with buying and running Gitlab. Having Google alone buy it and you may as well just migrate now pending the inevitable disinterest and shutdown. So I guess that I disagree, Gitlab makes more sense as an independent company, that it does as part of companies that already had failed competing products. My guess is the ever popular MicroFocus (Now OpenText) who will buy everything that it on the edge of popularity.
BadHumans 2y ago
JetBrains buying it would be out of left field but makes sense in some sense and would be the best possible outcome.
- brobdingnagians 2y ago
  Jetbrains decided to go from the Space product to a cut down Space Code product with just code review and git hosting, but then this last week announced they will be shuttering even that next year. I doubt they want to get back into the git hosting, if they did by buying GitLab, that would be odd.
- Macha 2y ago
  I'm not sure if Jetbrains is bigger than I expected or Gitlab smaller, but it feels to me that Jetbrains wouldn't be able to afford Gitlab.
  - reaperman 2y ago
    It would be roughly a merger of equals (1-2 billion either direction), and I'm not sure how that could be financed without JetBrains giving up too much control over their own existing company. Perhaps a bank could extend a private loan if they believed in JetBrains ability to use the merger to grow both sides of the merged company.
    - vasco 2y ago
      Gitlab is worth $10B on the public market right now without an acquisition premium. You're very far.
      - reaperman 2y ago
        Ah wow, my apologies. I didn’t realize it was publicly traded! I used very inappropriate sources for that valuation…most likely super outdated without realizing it.
freedomben 2y ago
I certainly agree that a horrible outcome would be if atlassian or Oracle buys it, but IBM? If IBM acquires and puts it under the red hat umbrella, they have a history of opening up products that were previously more closed. Considering what they did with ansible, for example, would be amazing for gitlab.
- angelaguilera 2y ago
  > If IBM acquires and puts it under the red hat umbrella, they have a history of opening up products that were previously more closed. As a former CentOS user, I politely disagree with this.
  - freedomben 2y ago
    I appreciate the politeness :-) Good point, red hat is far from perfect. The way they handled cent was incredibly disappointing.
firesteelrain 2y ago
Atlassian has their own Cloud offerings and their data center versions of Jira, BitBucket and Confluence are very good. I don’t see GitLab replacing BitBucket.
- acdha 2y ago
  They’ve been pushing customers to their cloud versions pretty hard and holding back features. Jira and Confluence are decent but BitBucket is like time-traveling back to 2010. We migrated to GitLab with unanimous enthusiasm – so many new features, so many things worked better - and that decision felt better as the years passed where we’d get “is anyone working on this?” updates on the Atlassian tickets for missing BitBucket features which had been years old when I’d voted for them.
  - firesteelrain 2y ago
    Our developers want GitLab because it means replacing Bamboo which is an OK product but we have hundreds of build agents that don’t scale for on prem. Each agent is a VM running on VMWare. The pipeline’s are so much better. But GitLab price annually for the same amount of users that we have for Bamboo and BitBucket is higher in licensing fees. We have to do things self hosted because of regulatory and compliance reasons. There is probably a business case to be made for the inefficiency that we see with Bamboo. BitBucket DC is pretty solid and never goes down. It integrates well with all the other Atlassian products like Jira or Confluence. Our instance is also highly available and fault tolerant.
TiredOfLife 2y ago
Jetbrains already has TeamCity and Youtrack
- apocalyptic0n3 2y ago
  They also had Space (discontinued in May) and Space Code (discontinued last week). I don't think GitLab makes much sense for them

GitLab doesn't really make sense as an independent company. Horrific outcomes: Atlassian, Oracle, or IBM buys it. Great outcomes: Google, Amazon, or JetBrains ($7B private valuation) buys it.

griomnib 2y ago

Eh, Google it goes to the graveyard (rip Google code), Amazon it gets buried, JetBrains would be cool tho.

adastra22 2y ago
Better comparison for Google would be YouTube.
- griomnib 2y ago
  Yes but that’s also pre-Sundar Google when there was some semblance of vision. Now that Ruth runs the company behind the scenes with a vision timeline that is measured in exactly 3 month increments…well, good luck.
echelon 2y ago
Some of Google's best business units were acquisitions. YouTube, Google Maps/Earth, Android, DoubeClick, DeepMind, Firebase, HTC (Pixel) Don't discount Google's M&A game.
- griomnib 2y ago
  They kill more than they allow to live, and doubleclick slowly hollowed out Google search by skewing incentives away from great content to maximizing display revenue via link bait. Doubleclick is to Google what McDonald Douglas’s is to Boeing.
- mrpippy 2y ago
  Don’t forget Docs (Wordly)
- evilduck 2y ago
  Are any of those from the last decade? They acquired them when they were a different company.
acdha 2y ago
Amazon has an okay but underwhelming developer suite. If they bought Gitlab and did nothing other than say that they should have first class support for AWS deployments it’d be a good move, and that’s before you consider things like pivoting Gitlab’s struggling AI tools to theirs or aligning all of the supply-chain stuff big companies want.
- jonstewart 2y ago
  CodeBuild asks so much and gives so little.
- cmckn 2y ago
  CodeCommit is on the way out, onboarding was disabled over the summer. https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/devops/how-to-migrate-your-aws-codecommit-repository-to-another-git-provider/ https://aws.amazon.com/blogs/devops/how-to-migrate-your-aws-...
morgante 2y ago
I wouldn't consign it to the graveyard that quickly. It's a lot easier/more common for Google to kill internal projects and small acquisitions. A $16B write-down is far less likely, especially when many Googlers internally realize how much a threat Microsoft is with GitHub + VS Code.

mrweasel 2y ago

Why would Google want it? They shutdown Google code and Amazon is shutting down CodeCommit. I think it would make more sense for a number of companies to invest in Gitlab, to ensure that there is a 3rd. party tool available, as to not "force" users into the hands of Github and Microsoft. That's probably the best case, Google, Amazon, IBM, JetBrains and a few others create a company, with themselves on the board, and tasks that company with buying and running Gitlab. Having Google alone buy it and you may as well just migrate now pending the inevitable disinterest and shutdown. So I guess that I disagree, Gitlab makes more sense as an independent company, that it does as part of companies that already had failed competing products. My guess is the ever popular MicroFocus (Now OpenText) who will buy everything that it on the edge of popularity.

BadHumans 2y ago

JetBrains buying it would be out of left field but makes sense in some sense and would be the best possible outcome.

brobdingnagians 2y ago
Jetbrains decided to go from the Space product to a cut down Space Code product with just code review and git hosting, but then this last week announced they will be shuttering even that next year. I doubt they want to get back into the git hosting, if they did by buying GitLab, that would be odd.
Macha 2y ago
I'm not sure if Jetbrains is bigger than I expected or Gitlab smaller, but it feels to me that Jetbrains wouldn't be able to afford Gitlab.
- reaperman 2y ago
  It would be roughly a merger of equals (1-2 billion either direction), and I'm not sure how that could be financed without JetBrains giving up too much control over their own existing company. Perhaps a bank could extend a private loan if they believed in JetBrains ability to use the merger to grow both sides of the merged company.
  - vasco 2y ago
    Gitlab is worth $10B on the public market right now without an acquisition premium. You're very far.
    - reaperman 2y ago
      Ah wow, my apologies. I didn’t realize it was publicly traded! I used very inappropriate sources for that valuation…most likely super outdated without realizing it.

freedomben 2y ago

I certainly agree that a horrible outcome would be if atlassian or Oracle buys it, but IBM? If IBM acquires and puts it under the red hat umbrella, they have a history of opening up products that were previously more closed. Considering what they did with ansible, for example, would be amazing for gitlab.

angelaguilera 2y ago
> If IBM acquires and puts it under the red hat umbrella, they have a history of opening up products that were previously more closed. As a former CentOS user, I politely disagree with this.
- freedomben 2y ago
  I appreciate the politeness :-) Good point, red hat is far from perfect. The way they handled cent was incredibly disappointing.

firesteelrain 2y ago

Atlassian has their own Cloud offerings and their data center versions of Jira, BitBucket and Confluence are very good. I don’t see GitLab replacing BitBucket.

acdha 2y ago
They’ve been pushing customers to their cloud versions pretty hard and holding back features. Jira and Confluence are decent but BitBucket is like time-traveling back to 2010. We migrated to GitLab with unanimous enthusiasm – so many new features, so many things worked better - and that decision felt better as the years passed where we’d get “is anyone working on this?” updates on the Atlassian tickets for missing BitBucket features which had been years old when I’d voted for them.
- firesteelrain 2y ago
  Our developers want GitLab because it means replacing Bamboo which is an OK product but we have hundreds of build agents that don’t scale for on prem. Each agent is a VM running on VMWare. The pipeline’s are so much better. But GitLab price annually for the same amount of users that we have for Bamboo and BitBucket is higher in licensing fees. We have to do things self hosted because of regulatory and compliance reasons. There is probably a business case to be made for the inefficiency that we see with Bamboo. BitBucket DC is pretty solid and never goes down. It integrates well with all the other Atlassian products like Jira or Confluence. Our instance is also highly available and fault tolerant.

TiredOfLife 2y ago

Jetbrains already has TeamCity and Youtrack

apocalyptic0n3 2y ago
They also had Space (discontinued in May) and Space Code (discontinued last week). I don't think GitLab makes much sense for them