[HN Gopher] Gitlab from YC to IPO ___________________________________________________________________ Gitlab from YC to IPO Author : sandslash Score : 480 points Date : 2021-10-14 13:31 UTC (9 hours ago) (HTM) web link (blog.ycombinator.com) (TXT) w3m dump (blog.ycombinator.com) | prabhatjha wrote: | What a success story for yet another open source project | xtracto wrote: | Well, kind of... Gitlab is another of those Freemium "open | source" services where you have to pay to have the full | functionality. | system2 wrote: | That's fair to me. | prabhatjha wrote: | Exactly. | teh_klev wrote: | "He used to joke that his home office was the biggest GitLab Inc. | office in the world because his _EA_ would work there as well. " | | Maybe my brain is in a post-lunchtime stupor, but what or who is | an "EA"? | [deleted] | villaaston1 wrote: | Executive assistant I think in this case, though I've seen | enterprise architect too! | dabeeeenster wrote: | Executive Assistant | [deleted] | alphalima wrote: | Executive Assistant? | teh_klev wrote: | Thank you everyone. | karolist wrote: | Electronic Arts | bytematic wrote: | Acronyms/Initialisms are great right? | jedberg wrote: | I'll admit that I was wrong about GitLab. I had the chance to | invest in them way back in the day, and passed. My thought at the | time was that no open source company had ever been super | successful except RedHat, which was more of an outlier than a | pattern. And my other thought was that they are competing against | GitHub, which was extremely popular and well funded. | | I honestly didn't think they stood a chance. | | I'm happy to have been proven wrong. Congrats to the whole team | on their successful exit! | pankajdoharey wrote: | I am always reminded how not so great ideas or even clones when | executed well lead to good outcomes. | klysm wrote: | I think if GitHub simply gave free private repos sooner, GitLab | would've had a way harder time. | jbergens wrote: | Gitlab was earlier/better at letting companies install a | version on-prem. | mcronce wrote: | Their CI story was also a lot better until Github added | Actions | polote wrote: | Github is initially B2B SMB and B2C and Gitlab is B2B | Enterprise. 10% of Github employee are sales , 25% for | Gitlab. I would say they are not even competitors | paxys wrote: | Disagree. Github's self-hosted product is trash compared to | Gitlab. Plus they were very late to the game when it came to | stuff like CI, package management, project tracking and a | whole suite of enterprise features. Github had (and still | has) a huge lead in public open-source development, but | that's it. | polote wrote: | If every investor was apologizing when a company he passed on | became successful they would not have any time to do investing | anymore. | | For any criteria (open source or github as a competitor in that | case) you will find some company that became successful. Even | the worst one. | secondaryacct wrote: | Dont worry, as a corporate user, it's a nightmare: it wont | last. | systemvoltage wrote: | It's really bloated but it's gonna live and get better over | time. Gitlab feels super slow compared to GitHub but it also | has more features. | | I'm personally extremely pro Source Hut but it's not ready | yet: https://sr.ht | taytus wrote: | >which was more of an outlier than a pattern | | If you are looking to invest in patterns what makes you | special? | | I thought the idea was to look for outliers. | jedberg wrote: | VCs are the most risk averse people you will meet. They | pretty much only look for patterns. That's why it's so hard | for minority/female founders -- because it doesn't fit their | pattern. I actually invest mostly in minority/female founders | for exactly this reason. | | Also, I never said I was any good. :) | nodesocket wrote: | I'll echo a sentiment I also had but perhaps I was wrong. I | believed that users of GitLab used GitLab because they didn't | want to pay a premium (or pay at all) for GitHub; thus I viewed | it as a cheaper alternative in the same vein as buying a | Hyundai vs buying a Mercedes. I assumed only frugal | "developers" were using it, and surely any legit companies | would opt for the superior GitHub. | mr_cyborg wrote: | Interesting comparison with cars, I would think a Hyundai is | much more reliable and less expensive to maintain than a | Mercedes, and Hyundai is now being positioned as a more | premium brand than it once was. | | On topic, GitLab is great at CI/CD and awesome for self- | hosting things. | [deleted] | maxsilver wrote: | Just one user here, but I definitely _prefer_ GitLab over | GitHub. | | Not because GitHub is bad in any particular way, I just like | the feature set and UI of GitLab better. Less of a "Hyundai | vs Mercedes" thing, and more of a "Ford vs Chevy" thing. | | They're both decent and they both have approximately the same | level of "premium-ness". They're just feature-wise and | aesthetically slightly different in arbitrary ways. And some | people either do or don't vibe better with the one or the | other. | specialist wrote: | Any takeaway lessons for evaluating future FOSS startups? Like | maybe place higher weight on rate of adding new users? | jedberg wrote: | I've found that my bar for investing is the same no matter | what kind of company it is -- how quickly can they sell me on | investing? As much as us engineers hate to admit it, the most | important skill for a founder is the ability to sell. Besides | the obvious of having to sell to customers, they also have to | sell their vision to VCs, sell their company to potential | employees, sell their vision to journalists and potential | customers, etc. | | If I'm not convinced to invest after one meeting, I usually | don't invest. On the other hand, if I'm convinced after five | minutes, I'm usually asking where to send the wire by the end | of the meeting. | | Armory is a good example of an open source/open core company | I _did_ invest in. They had me convinced in just a few | minutes. They had an answer for every one of my objections | and made me feel like I 'd be missing out if I didn't invest. | And so far they're doing really well and it's one of my best | investments to date. | ignoramous wrote: | > _...how quickly can they sell me on investing? As much as | us engineers hate to admit it, the most important skill for | a founder is the ability to sell. Besides the obvious of | having to sell to customers, they also have to sell their | vision to VCs, sell their company to potential employees, | sell their vision to journalists and potential customers, | etc._ | | As cynical and hollow as it sounds, pretty sure this advice | is consistent with what I have heard in multiple videos and | blogs from YC. | | See also: "create investor fomo", https://html.duckduckgo.c | om/html/search?q=create%20fomo%20in... | moneywoes wrote: | What do you find is the "best way to sell"? | jedberg wrote: | Have an answer to every objection. First figure out all | the ways you would object and make sure you have an | answer, then note down any objections you don't have an | answer to during your process and make sure you have a | good answer next time. | | And if you're selling a product, make sure you know your | competitors well because a lot of objections will be in | the form of "but competitor X does this, how do you solve | that problem?" and "what do you do that X doesn't do?". | So you better know X really well because the person | you're talking to already does and will know if you're | making stuff up. | altdataseller wrote: | Is Gitlab 100% open source? | mr_tristan wrote: | It's really "open core", but they use one code base, so | commercial-licensed code is "available" but not under an open | source license. | | https://about.gitlab.com/handbook/marketing/strategic- | market... | | NOTE: I'm not associated with GitLab at all I just found the | topic interesting. I don't know of many other projects that | actually do things this way, with all the commercial licensed | code mixed in with the open source code. | | This was kind of an interesting speech I found searching | around: https://www.heavybit.com/library/video/commercial- | open-sourc... | pankajdoharey wrote: | Opensource isnt such a problem the software should be great, | i fail to see how Gitlab is better than Github. | dragontamer wrote: | Github is a website while Gitlab is software. | robinhood wrote: | Github is actually a web application, like Gitlab. | dragontamer wrote: | Can you download Github and host a private Github | instance? No? Then its web-only. Like Google Docs is web- | only, while MS Word is offline. | | Gitlab is hostable software. You can buy and host Gitlab | on your own servers, in private. That makes it a | fundamentally different market than Github. | Kranar wrote: | >Can you download Github and host a private Github | instance? | | Yes, that's what Github Enterprise Server is: | | https://docs.github.com/en/enterprise- | server@3.2/admin/overv... | bityard wrote: | Gitlab is both actually | shaan7 wrote: | I work for two clients (one of them is a huge German | company) as a consultant who are both using GitLab simply | because they can host it on their infrastructure. Makes it | easier for them to satisfy internal security policies I | guess. | GoblinSlayer wrote: | What else would they use? | rnicholus wrote: | Gitlab always felt like a set of checkboxes to appease non- | technical managers. In my experience, most features are | half-baked. Even the code review/MR experience is | frustrating compared to GitHub. The UX for security scans | is _really_ rough. | chrisweekly wrote: | GitLab CI is world-class. | 210Donegal wrote: | What about the UX for security scans is rough? | nitrogen wrote: | GitLab's integrated CI came before GitHub actions and was | super helpful. | Mikeb85 wrote: | GitHub is Microsoft now. | | Not going to lie, simply keeping my code away from MS is a | good enough use case. | robinhood wrote: | Microsoft is the largest open source organization in the | world today. What else do they need to do to gain some | kind of trust? I love what they do with Github since the | acquisition. VSCode is amazing. They've open source most | of their programming language. Github is free for open | source org and there are no limits to the CI usage. | | Trusting Gitlab more than Github is naive at this point. | They are in the position of needing to generate as much | revenue as possible to satisfy their investors. Github is | not in this position anymore. | ekianjo wrote: | Largest open source organization based on what metrics ? | They havent open up any of their bread making products. | wizzwizz4 wrote: | It is not. They're better than _most_ - and I know that 's | not a high bar, but they clear it by a wide margin. | Nonetheless, their software is better described as "open | core". | pestaa wrote: | RedHat is not 100% open source either (although the | differences are important). | fredros wrote: | I'd say it's 99% open source. Do you have any significant | example of non open source red hat software ? | killerstorm wrote: | > My thought at the time was that no open source company had | ever been super successful except RedHat | | Sun bought MySQL for 1 billion USD in 2008, does that not count | as successful? | | Also, MongoDB, Elastic and many many others... | ZetaZero wrote: | MongoDB and Elastic are successful because they are locking | features behind a paid license. Does that make it a | successful open source company? | codetrotter wrote: | GitLab has features in the Enterprise edition that aren't | in the Community edition don't they? | djbusby wrote: | Correct. | strzibny wrote: | But GitLab is the same concept... | jedberg wrote: | I meant there were no successful public companies based on | open source except RedHat in 2015. | mindwok wrote: | I've used Gitlab constantly for many years, and they stand out to | me as a company that delivers new features at an astounding pace | and with a relatively high level of polish. I really don't know | how they do it. Congrats to the Gitlab team, your success is well | deserved! | marsven_422 wrote: | They need a lower price point for premium, all I want is enforced | reviews of merge request. But $19 _12_ 15 is to much for that | feature. | debacle wrote: | A paid user + big fan of gitlab. They exist in a strange valley | between github and Atlassian where usability has remained high | while also being featureful. | | Their kanban is 10% more functional than Trello, which is all our | small team really needs, they give you everything and they don't | nickel and dime you. | | The only feature I would like to see improved is their PR | process. Seems a bit buggy with remotely large changesets, and | the digest for the PR should provide a bit more context to | reviewees. | marceloabsousa wrote: | We've been building a new code review tool for the PR/MR | process. Check it out at https://reviewpad.com. | disgruntledphd2 wrote: | The only issue I had with GL is that they don't show the entire | diff if the changes/files are very large. | | They may have fixed this since last year, but it was super, | super annoying to me at the time. | debacle wrote: | You can "expand" the diff, but sometimes that breaks the UI, | makes it unable to add comments, etc. That's probably the | reason they don't show large changesets by default. | 1270018080 wrote: | Their search functionality is also... non functioning. | Github's search is dramatically more powerful. | necovek wrote: | Nope, they still arbitrarily decide to "fold" big changes | (file with a large diff), causing me to miss entire files | when reviewing on occasion. | | In all honesty, their pull request pages need a lot of UX | work: too much stuff going on on the overview pages, jumping | to unresolved threads does not work when they are in previous | commits... | | There's also that merge train confusion where merge trains | get "cancelled" without an obvious explanation ("this was | cancelled because it is included in a new one" would do). In | a sense, I'd say that their UX is pretty bad, but the API is | not much better either (you can't fetch pipeline log files | with individual script timings that you see floating on the | right in the web UI). If anything, all of this only goes to | show that you don't need to be perfect to be good! | | But I applaud the effort, mission and dedication they put up, | and especially their open core nature. | | Congrats on the IPO and keep pushing forward. | dhritzkiv wrote: | Yes! Gitlab's offerings are great, and our team doesn't even | scratch the surface of what's possible with its feature set. | | That said, MRs with over 1000 lines of changes are painful | sometimes impossible to review. Even small MRs feel clunky, due | to how many panels there are (yes, I know they're collapsible). | Because MRs are one of our most used features, it sometimes | makes me consider switching to GitHub for their much nicer PR | UX/UI. | Gepsens wrote: | I prefer to use Intellij now for reviews. How can people | review any kind of code in that PR web UI ? I mean I used to | do it but not anymore | marceloabsousa wrote: | Would be very curious about your thoughts on Reviewpad | (https://reviewpad.com). The interactions you have on the | IDE are very different than a tool that was specifically | made for code reviews. | nyanpasu64 wrote: | Do you review code in the code _editor_ , the git _diff_ , | or some specialized full-PR/MR diff with integration with | online comments and discussions? | | https://stackoverflow.com/questions/40217494/how-to- | review-a... says IntelliJ has GitHub-only specialized PR | review/commenting. | dhritzkiv wrote: | Yeah, I should really quit struggling with Gitlab's. | | For really large MRs, I use Tower + Kaleidoscope to view | the changes. But then I can't easily leave a comment on a | line of code (a big part of the review process) | FabioFleitas wrote: | Gitlab's IPO would also mark the first ever 100% distributed | company to IPO. Wild! | pixelmonkey wrote: | Elastic (NYSE: ESTC) was pretty much a fully distributed team | upon IPO. They had offices, but they were more like "coworking | cafes", where folks who happened to be in the same geographic | area would meet up, or have social celebrations. At least, | that's my understanding, tracking the company since its early | days. On a recent podcast, Shay Banon described it as a fully | distributed team of 2,000+ folks.[1] They IPO'ed in 2018.[2] | | [1]: https://pca.st/kvgw4iz9 | | [2]: https://twitter.com/kimchy/status/1048595935088009216 | heytherewhat wrote: | > They had offices | | And Gitlab doesn't. | bdcravens wrote: | What has really bothered me about Gitlab is that everytime Github | copies a feature, there's a testy blog post about "we did it | first!" when Gitlab as a business is a copy of Github. | gbear605 wrote: | And Github is a copy of Sourceforge, which is inevitably a copy | of someone else. | | Source code hosting as a business isn't new, it just needs to | be executed well. | dQw4w9WgXcQ wrote: | Another big win for Joe Montana, but this time via Liquid 2 | Ventures. | literallyWTF wrote: | Oh geez. This most likely means the frequency of their updates | will get even faster and their somewhat dubious quality will | plummet. | | Who knows, maybe I'll be wrong and their auto devops pipelines | might actually get rid of kubernetes namespaces for branches that | don't exist! :0 | smartbit wrote: | Dmitriy Zaporozhets is explicit mentioned in the blog and on the | photo. The S1 doesn't mention him | https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28573867. Anyone know why | Dmitriy owns less than 5% of the outstanding shares of the Class | A or Class B common stock? | eganist wrote: | Dilution plus private stock sale or unequal share provisioning | among founders? Probably a handful of things, though not sure | if it has any bearing on Gitlab's success. | 0xbadcafebee wrote: | Ever since I found their company handbook online, I have been in | love with their process/culture and wanted to work for them. But | I don't write Ruby and they don't seem to need a lot of | DevOps/SysEng/SREs. | jandeboevrie wrote: | I worked with Sytse (as Sid used to be called) back in 2011/2012 | in The Hague when he consulted at Digidentity, with Marin. Great | guy back then, used to run around in a lab coat, the GitLAB guy. | Wonderful to see what Gitlab has become, well done! | mcv wrote: | > Sytse (as Sid used to be called) | | That explains a lot. I thought Sid was an unusual name for | someone with that surname. But it makes business sense to use | something more internationally pronounceable. | jandeboevrie wrote: | Fun fact on Dutch names, his wife Karen has the same | Sijbrandij, but not due to marriage, but due to them being | distant cousins, who found one another on the search function | of an early chat client, like ICQ, he once told us. So she | could actually call herself Karen Sijbrandij-Sijbrandij. | alangibson wrote: | Have any of the finance minded HN commenters decided if the $10B | valuation is justified? I'm usually pretty negative about high | valuations, but given their enterprise penetration, this one | seems almost reasonable. | gitfan86 wrote: | ORCL, MSFT, SalesForce and a few others would pay 10B+ to own | those relationships and control of the future of the product | johannes1234321 wrote: | If they were paying more than an IPO value they probably | would buy already ... | gitfan86 wrote: | Gitlab doesn't want to sell | johannes1234321 wrote: | GitLab Just (partially) sold. | | However: If they don't want to (fully) sell basing the | price on a value someone else might eventually pay for a | (full) acquisition doesn't make much sense. (Unless you | assume they revise the decision, but then the argument | about not selling is moot again) | gitfan86 wrote: | Look at Facebook. Zuck has no interest in giving up full | control to someone else, but he does want to be a public | company. | johannes1234321 wrote: | Yes, since FB is a money printing machine producing lots | of revenue which is some argument forms one market value | for parts of a company. | | The argument Here was "ORCL, MSFT, SalesForce and a few | others would pay 10B+" but those would pay those | valuations only for full control. | | FB's market cap is around 900B$. Gaining full control | over FB would be valued a lot more. | czbond wrote: | Came to look for the same. I haven't found current or future | projections on revenue to hang something on. | nabla9 wrote: | Microsoft paid $7.5 billion for GitHub in 2018. | | GitLab being ~$10B 4 year later seems like similar ballbark. | There is always the possibility of acquisition in the future. | | (EDIT: had names reversed) | NineStarPoint wrote: | Microsoft only paying 7.5 billion for GitHub definitely makes | me less confident that GitLab is worth 10 billion. | | Much as I personally prefer GitLab, GitHub had a bigger | customer base back then than GitLab has now. GitLab may be | gaining market share, but it's mostly eating Atlassian's | portion of the market and not GitHub's. It's plausible GitHub | undervalued themself in the sale to Microsoft of course, so a | careful look at the numbers is required to evaluate the | valuation, but the value comparison isn't a great sign to me. | | Separately of course, GitLab might be in line with the | valuation of companies on the stock market in general which | have ballooned heavily in recent years. Whether that's a | bubble or permanent inflation in stock prices then becomes | the relevant question to answer, I suppose. | nemothekid wrote: | > _Microsoft only paying 7.5 billion for GitHub definitely | makes me less confident that GitLab is worth 10 billion._ | | It's worth considering that between 2018 and now, tech | valuations have _exploded_. MSFT is up 300%. QQQ is up | 100%. I doubt GitHub is valued anywhere near 7.5B today. | thefreeman wrote: | how many users did github have at the time vs gitlab now? | dewey wrote: | > Microsoft paid $7.5 billion for GitLab in 2018. | | That's a bit of an alternate timeline. | [deleted] | lmeyerov wrote: | As with GitHub, the bigger value is owning shift left | disruptions for enterprise and cloud sw+he services: security | scanning, backups, prod server hosting, ... . | | It is hard to compete with AWS, and a lot easier if you own the | UI+APIs for how software teams do CI+CD: you become a default | preferred vendor for all IaaS/PaaS add-ins, and can proactively | recommend and even trial them well before any competitor. IBM, | Oracle, SalesForce, SAP, Alibaba, etc could all win big -- | imagine if IBM bought GitLab instead of RedHat to fix their | data center strategy. | isthis129283 wrote: | First 6 months of this year Gitlab took in $108M in revenue, | and had $177M in expenses. Would you pay $10B to own a company | that loses $10M/month, with the hopes they will continue to | increase revenue in the future and become profitable? | mikeyouse wrote: | In the 6 months before their IPO - Square had net revenue of | $200 million and expenses of $260 million, also losing | $10M/month. Would you have paid $3 billion in 2015 to own | that business? | | If you had you would've had a 30x return today... (current | market cap is ~$112 billion). | user5994461 wrote: | The large majority of the 30x return was over the past 2 | years with the pandemic, which is not going to happen for | Gitlab. | | God forbids if you bought square long ago and didn't hold | long enough, they had multiple years of ups and downs. | | https://www.google.com/search?q=square+share | alangibson wrote: | Personally I'd buy an aircraft carrier if I had $10B. | Nevertheless, there are plenty of people willing to put it in | Gitlab or they wouldn't IPO. A better question might have | been: what's the bull argument for Gitlab? | IggleSniggle wrote: | The usage argument is: buy your own "self-hosted" cloud | offering, deployed over any combination of | AWS/Azure/GCP/onprem that you like. | | The bull argument probably looks something like: replace | Microsoft Office 365 / Azure with an integrated "self- | hosted" solution, easily deployed to any commoditized | compute...handled by GitLab for paying customers, | assurances of "escape hatch" to DIY open-source when you | stop paying. | airstrike wrote: | Define "justified". For most purposes, the market looks at | valuation on a relative basis1. | | Their S-1 says GitLab generated revenues of $152 million in FY | 2021 (ending Jan 31), up 87% from the year before2. For the | sake of argument, let's assume their growth rate slows down | "slightly" to 50%. That's ~$230 million projected for FY 2022 | | At $10 billion, that implies a forward revenue multiple of | ~43.5x, which does seem high--but it's not necessarily | "unjustified". I haven't read the S-1 and the market reaction | to the IPO has been quite positive so far. You'd need to know | the business and the market well to make your own individual | assessment of why it commands this premium multiple. Customers, | TAM, growth, churn, competition, etc. | | ---------- | | 1. For better or worse, relative valuation is viewed as "more | defensible". If you're wrong, you can simply say, "well, that's | how the market was pricing it at the time" whereas if you are | wrong with your intrinsic valuation model (like a DCF), you | have no one to blame. | | 2. | https://www.bamsec.com/filing/162828021018818/1?cik=1653482&... | user5994461 wrote: | How much of that revenue growth was driven by Gitlab more | than quadrupling their price in the last two years? ($4 to | $19 a month). | | They can't pull that trick again. | buryat wrote: | they have massive losses | | https://www.sec.gov/Archives/edgar/data/0001653482/000162828... | maxpert wrote: | Congratulations to the team. It's rewarding to make it through, | but don't make the product shittier just because you are big now. | atonse wrote: | "Gitlab CEO here, getting rich and feeling proud" [1] ;-) - | congrats to the Sid, Dmitriy, and the rest of the Gitlab team. | Always appreciated your presence on HN. | | We've been GitLab customers for 2-3 years now (what was | attractive was having "everything in one SaaS subscription") and | it's worked out quite well. | | There's always papercuts for sure and the product could always | use more polish, but overall it has been nice to have most of our | dev processes under one umbrella. | | Now when is Hashicorp going public? I've got my wallet ready for | that one. | | [1] | https://hn.algolia.com/?dateRange=all&page=0&prefix=true&que... | nabakin wrote: | When I click on your link to find the quote, it doesn't show | up. Strange. Or are you playing off of the joke? | atonse wrote: | That's strange. | | Try looking for "gitlab CEO here" (with quotes) at the bottom | search on HN? (and pick Comments. they won't show up in | stories.) | elpakal wrote: | Congrats to the team and I'm very thankful that there are | alternatives to GitHub out there. Not that I don't like GitHub (I | do) or use GitHub (every day), but lately it seems like they are | sherlocking a whole lot of ideas from the OSS "marketplace" into | their main product. That kind of irks me. | | If GitLab were able to add something like GitHub Actions into | their platform I would leave GH in a second. | dadrian wrote: | GitLab CI is basically GitHub Actions, except easier to use. | elpakal wrote: | yea I'm not talking about CI, mostly _all the other things_ | Actions can do right now like label events, comment events, | all the events etc. | ericpauley wrote: | GitLab has a very mature CI/CD framework that in many ways | outshines Actions[1]. I use it regularly and definitely | recommend it. | | [1] https://about.gitlab.com/devops-tools/github-vs-gitlab/ci- | mi... | snypox wrote: | Isn't GitLabs whole premise is the CI/CD? | gadders wrote: | For anyone else that needs it: | | The phenomenon of Apple releasing a feature that supplants or | obviates third-party software is so well known that being | Sherlocked has become an accepted term used within the Mac and | iOS developer community. | bee_rider wrote: | Gitlab is definitely very neat. But I always worry when these | sorts of companies go to IPO. What is their financial situation | like? Are they currently able to become profitable without | drastically changing the deal with users? | megous wrote: | Well they're currently trying to test that hypothesis via A/B | tests: | | https://forum.gitlab.com/t/cant-open-the-signin-page-it-keep... | rossmohax wrote: | They had $192M losses in 2021 and $152M revenue. So no, not | even remotely profitable, but it is common: Atlassian, Jira, | Datadog, PagerDuty, Snowflake, CloudFlare, Fastly all IPOed and | succeeded on the market without being profitable even once. | scottydelta wrote: | Gitlab is the only easy, reliable, and free docker registry | provider and I have been using them since more than a year. Happy | to see them succeed. | lnxg33k1 wrote: | I guess after GitHub and gitlab i will have to find an | alternative, so long and thanks for all the fish, I'm not really | sure why we need to pursue growth at all cost, a perpetual hunt | for currency on daily basis, of a number we will never be able to | spend | HatchedLake721 wrote: | Why? | jypepin wrote: | I used to work at Uber's Amsterdam office at a time where the | remote nature of the office (from SF HQ) was a struggle for some | teams because of strong dependencies on teams located at SF HQ. | | Sid came to the office and talked to us about some strategies | Gitlab used for remote work, timezone differences etc. | | Not only the talk was very helpful, Sid was an incredibly clear | communicator, calm and humble. He really seemed to be a great | leader and someone it must be nice working with. | Copenjin wrote: | For those who want to know more about Gitlab and its all remote | approach (a lot of posts): | https://about.gitlab.com/blog/tags.html#remote-work | | And their handbook: https://about.gitlab.com/handbook/ | e40 wrote: | We used this as a template the year before the pandemic to | get our mostly remote teams working well. Once the pandemic | hit, there were few issues we had to address. | | I very much appreciate them making that public. | Copenjin wrote: | Yep, that wiki is amazing. | alohaandmahalo wrote: | Darren here from GitLab -- warms my heart to hear that | our remote guides are being used and making | lives/companies better. Thank you! | wyldfire wrote: | I recently wanted to try adding some diagrams to a markdown- | formatted README file in a Github Enterprise repo. I saw a few | solutions but they all seemed to require me to roll some kind of | service or automation to generate a raster image of the diagram | and reference that from the markdown. There's an outstanding | feature request for Github to integrate this kind of thing in | their markdown rendering. But it's been languishing for years. Of | course, Gitlab has had it for a while. | | If Github's not careful, Gitlab will eat their lunch. | | Gitlab should be careful not to make their product into "The | Homer" [1], though. | | [1] https://simpsons.fandom.com/wiki/The_Homer | woodruffw wrote: | I agree with the general thrust of your comment (and I've been | happy to see that GitHub's feature development pick up over the | past few years), but I don't know if Markdown is the best | example: I've lost track of how many times I or someone else I | work with has written some Markdown, only to discover that it's | a GH or GL extension and that our deployed documentation (or | package index pages) don't render our hard work correctly. | vultour wrote: | GitLab has already turned into "The Homer". It has hundreds | (thousands?) of features, but if you stray away from the core | git functionality you'll very quickly realise they're pretty | bad. | | I've always seen GitLab as a useful tool for smaller companies | where you can use it to replace several other applications | (e.g. JIRA, Jenkins, or wiki), but if your company already has | those established it all becomes somewhat useless. | exhaze wrote: | Have you read the GitLab S-1? They have great retention with | larger companies. Can you substantiate any of your claims? | (FYI I have no horse in this race, I evaluated GH vs GL | recently and decided to stay on GH for now) | adduc wrote: | From their S-1: | | > We do not have an adequate history with our subscription | or pricing models to accurately predict the long-term rate | of customer subscription renewals or adoption, or the | impact these renewals and adoption will have on our | revenues or operating results. | | For context, GitLab recently axed their lowest priced plan | and grandfathered in existing users at cheaper rates for | the next year. Their retention rate may drop once discounts | run out and the new pricing kicks in. | | As to the parent's comment about "The Homer" and non-core | features being bad, I'd point to their CI autoscaling | solution as an example of being underdeveloped, over- | marketed, and suffering from technical debt. Their | autoscaler uses docker machine behind-the-scenes, which | hooks into various cloud providers to abstract away the act | of spinning up new VMs. It works reasonably well, but | Docker has archived the repository and no longer supports | the software. GitLab forked the repository and maintains it | for critical fixes, but is not willing to develop or accept | new features. It has been known to break against new | versions of Docker, does not handle concurrency very well | in new environments, and does not allow [1] executing | multiple concurrent jobs within spun up VMs, despite | marketing that it can [2]. | | While the autoscaler does work, it's limitations and quirks | reduces it's utility and cost-savings significantly within | smaller organizations. The technical debt leaves me | doubting any improvements will come within the next few | years as they try to architect a new solution to replace | the existing one. | | I have no idea how GitLab compares in other areas, but | within CI autoscaling it seems they're stuck with a cliff | to climb down before they can move forward again. | | [1]: https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab- | runner/-/issues/2787#no... | | [2]: https://about.gitlab.com/blog/2017/11/23/autoscale-ci- | runner... | rossmohax wrote: | CI is moving in Kubernetes everywhere I know. Builtin | kubernetes pod autoscaler can add capacity based on job | queue length metric, so no need for docker machine | anymore. | the-dude wrote: | I think it is fair to say Gitlab is already eating Github's | lunch. For some time. | brightball wrote: | Is it? | nerdponx wrote: | Are they? What's the Gitlab market share? | | Also, it sounds to me like Github is leaving the old lunch of | "Git hosting + issue tracking" on the table, and moving on to | being a kind of web-based all-in-one full-service | collaboration/dev platform with a social network built in. So | even if Gitlab picks up some single-digit-percentage market | share, that's not what Github cares about anyway. | what_is_orcas wrote: | > a kind of web-based all-in-one full-service | collaboration/dev platform with a social network built in. | | Why would I want a social network built into my version | control & ci/cd pipeline (I assume you're referring to the | "stars" feature, and not about issue reporting). | | Maybe I'm just a curmudgeon, but I'm sort of sick of | everything becoming a social network. I neither have nor do | I want internet clout, and all social networks feel like | they're trying to force me into "keeping up with the | Jones'" in whatever way they're relevant. | nerdponx wrote: | Github has been a social network for years. You can | follow users and "star" repositories. | | It has its merits for search and discovery. | johannes1234321 wrote: | In OpenSource space there is a small value: If I get a | contribution from a stranger and I see they are respected | contributor to trustworthy other organisations I can | derive some trust from that. (Doesn't mean handing out | access and blindly merging, but helps to judge) | | Also for people looking for jobs it can be a tool for | self promotion. | pjot wrote: | Especially considering the coupling of GitHub with vscode | airstrike wrote: | Surprised they didn't go for the "GIT" ticker | dgudkov wrote: | Dmitriy Zaporozhets (co-founder) was Gitlab's CTO until 2018 and | now his LinkedIn profile says "Engineering fellow at Gitlab". | What happened to him? | coolhand1 wrote: | It's pretty incredible what Gitlab has been able to accomplish | considering the market space they're in. | m0zg wrote: | Kudos to GitLab for boldly and successfully going where (almost) | no company has gone before - to having a worldwide, distributed | workforce. Truly the way of the future, and (IMO) better quality | of life for employees once they get used to working remote and | stop fighting it. I've been working primarily remote for the past | 3 years, and my QOL has never been better. No commute, working | hours can be when I feel productive (which tends to be in the | evening), and if I'm tired nobody will look at me funny if I take | a nap, except maybe my cat. | | Most importantly, this forces folks into asynchronous and written | communication, which both makes my work less interrupt driven, | and reduces reliance on institutional knowledge. I think we're | yet to fully realize the benefits of this brave new world. And | yes, I'm aware that some folks need water cooler conversations. I | don't though. | | Sid, if you're reading this, do please write a book on how you | did it, so others could replicate your success in terms of | geographic distribution. Knowing the legal / accounting / tax | pitfalls, and how to avoid getting screwed when hiring abroad | would be pretty invaluable to others. | sdflhasjd wrote: | I really like Gitlab, and I wanted to move my team onto their | hosted offering, but earlier this year they changed the pricing | so abruptly and drastically that it just killed it as an option. | | It just feels like it does too much, and unless you want to | commit to having everyone using it for _everything_ the pricing | doesn't seem to make sense. | gorkish wrote: | The pricing model with GitLab is really unfortunate for certain | types of companies. For our developers who really do most | everything in Gitlab, it's great, but buying the same licenses | for literally anyone else who might need to peek in there a | couple of times a month? Hell naw. | | Our spend would be much higher (probably 3-4x) if they allowed | some type of reasonable mix of license levels. | rossmohax wrote: | Thats is what sales team is for. Talk to them, explain you | usecase and set of features you are looking to use, they'll | give you a discount based on that. If I remember correctly we | managed to get a license for all users who ever need to | login, but for the price of number of core active users. | xtracto wrote: | Same thing happened to me at a previous company: I had just | migrated from Github to Gitlab and was planning on getting on | the paid plan, when they suddenly did the price bump. Worse of | all is that it is not possible to pay monthly (Github allows | this). So we got back to Github. | mooreds wrote: | I haven't used gitlab much, but I was shocked to hear GitHub's | CTO (at the time of the interview, he has moved on since) state | that GitHub didn't consider them a competitor. | | "I do think that people still, to this day, think of GitLab as | one of our main competitors, and I never have ever saw GitLab as | a competitor." | | https://www.lastweekinaws.com/podcast/screaming-in-the-cloud... | | Anyone have thoughts on that? Or pointers to more reading? | mullingitover wrote: | Github should see them as competitors, because Gitlab has | definitely taken business from them. | | Back in 2014 I started at a company that was still using a | hand-rolled git server. They tried out Github enterprise but | were unsatisfied with GH's lack of LDAP integration, so they | were going to continue to frankenstein their in-house git | server. I pitched them Gitlab instead, which did pretty much | everything GH enterprise was doing, _plus_ LDAP integration, | _plus_ was a fraction of the price. They were sold, I migrated | the company to Gitlab, and continued to be impressed as Gitlab | ran laps around Github on features. | reducesuffering wrote: | As Peter Thiel repeatedly puts in Zero to One: | | Monopolists love to talk about have they have competitors and | act like they're in competition. | | Competitors love to downplay that they have any competitors at | all and try to upsell their business like they're monopolists. | erik_landerholm wrote: | While anecdotal, we see a lot of development environments for a | lot of companies and the amount using github vs gitlab is like | 5 or 6x to 1. So, in that sense I get what the CTO of github is | saying. | pid-1 wrote: | GitHub has stronger 'social' features and it's better for | people who want to connect to other devs or build portfolios. | | GitLab is years ahead of GitHub for certain stuff (e.g. CI/CD) | and IMO it has a better commercial offering for business. | | I use GitHub as my portfolio profile for free and GitLab in my | $JOB. | | That's my opinion tho, I'm just a person who uses both. | pjot wrote: | In an interview I had with GL the interviewer mentioned | "people use GH for open source work, and GL for closed". | la_fayette wrote: | Thats somehow funny, as GH is closed source and GL is open | source... | 10000truths wrote: | Makes perfect sense to me. Because GL is open source, it | can be easily self hosted, which is great for data | residency compliance, or specialized security needs. | devoutsalsa wrote: | Self hosting is never easy. If you nerf the GitLab | database by doing something unsupported or because of a | bug, good luck with that. | | Source: an employer of mine nerfed the GitLab database | and support to fix it was not an option, so we had to | migrate to their cloud offering. | __turbobrew__ wrote: | The gitlab omnibus installation has built in support for | backups. Literally just run a single command to create a | backup on a network share. | | Not having backups for gitlab on prem is just lazy system | administration. | mritzmann wrote: | Self hosting GitLab = Run 1 single Docker Container. Very | easy. | polskibus wrote: | It's mostly a matter of backups. Only pick self hosted if | you can back it up reliably every night. | skeeter2020 wrote: | Remember that GitHub is not MS's enterprise product in this | space. When they acquired GH everyone waited for "the merge" | and I think they've been really smart to (at least) appear to | be hands off. I can happily use GH for my stuff while cursing | Azure DevOps for work without going crazy. | whymarrh wrote: | Yeah they're similar feature-wise but the communities that | exists on GitHub vs. GitLab aren't remotely comparable. | vultour wrote: | GitHub's CI pipelines are behind GitLab? My lord, here I was | thinking about moving to GitHub Enterprise when our | subscription expires because everything in GitLab feels like | an unfinished weekend project. Seems like nobody can get | anywhere near the functionality of Jenkins. | cyberpunk wrote: | Seriously, they're miles behind. It doesn't even really | support Kubernetes, you have to have long running 'runner' | servers ala Jenkins and you need to have all your build | tools installed on those. It's miserable, fragile and I've | dearly, dearly missed gitlab CI the last few times I've had | to go anywhere near actions. | easton wrote: | It's probably because Actions is a fork of Azure | Pipelines, which was originally designed to coordinate | runners on Windows (where containers aren't nearly as | flexible or compatible as they are on Linux). Microsoft | came up with some fancy internal magic to have hot pools | of ephemeral VMs ready to assign in seconds, which nobody | outside can really replicate (I don't think), and then | everyone sits in sadness while they try to debug why | their tests run fine on "runner-1" but not on "runner-2". | pid-1 wrote: | I agree GitLab's CI has many edge cases. More importantly, | it feels like they stopped making it better to focus on | other stuff. | | That said, GH actions is really new and full of imitations | / weird stuff as well. I still think GL offers more bang | for the buck in 2021. | | Another option is using something external like Drone CI, | Circle CI, etc... Some of those look nice, but I've never | tested myself. | mooreds wrote: | > Seems like nobody can get anywhere near the functionality | of Jenkins. | | I've heard Jenkins is a nightmare to administer (not sure | about the new versions). Seems like an opportunity: the | power of Jenkins with modern sensibility. | specialist wrote: | Jenkins (and the like) are build script obfuscation | frameworks. | cyberpunk wrote: | Jenkins is a nightmare because everyone decided to spend | months customising it with groovy and it became overly | specific to your team/dept. The servers themselves are | quite simple (single .jar, etc). These days we have | containers, and it's made CI a much better thing. | mikepurvis wrote: | I agree with this. The quality of your Jenkins experience | will be pretty much inversely proportional to how much | groovy script is in your Jenkinsfiles. | | Every new permutation of parameters is a new chance for | something to go wrong, and there's basically no sane way | to unit test or validate any of your "helper" functions, | so they're all write-once-change-never. | | Which is not necessarily a problem inherent in Jenkins-- | Jenkins just gives you more than enough rope to hang | yourself. GitLab CI can get silly too, but culturally it | inherits from the much simpler Travis model, where you're | basically expected to just be wrapping some other build | tool (eg, tox from the Python world) rather than rolling | the whole thing yourself. | outworlder wrote: | Groovy is arguably the wrong language choice, even if it | worked fine in other aspects. The string handling | situation alone is crazy, which is compounded if you are | using it with bash (which has its own crazy ideas about | string escaping). That's a not too uncommon scenario. | | You end up with this: | | https://gist.github.com/Faheetah/e11bd0315c34ed32e681616e | 412... | outworlder wrote: | > Jenkins is a nightmare because everyone decided to | spend months customising it with groovy and it became | overly specific to your team/dept | | Yes. One thousand times this. | | If you are running simple scripts it's fine. If you are | using the declarative pipeline, it's fine. The moment you | start adding Groovy you'll be down a path that is filled | with sadness and anger. Mind you, even the folks behind | Jenkins will advise you not to use any complex Groovy | scripts(including for performance reasons - you can | easily overwork the jenkins master). | | I've been focusing on Concourse because it forces the | usage of containers for everything. You don't have to | care about what's installed in the worker node, you just | use a container that has the stuff you want. Simple | inputs and outputs. | | You _can_ do the same sort of thing with Jenkins (but be | aware of all the bugs still open regarding containers). | But Jenkins doesn't force you to do anything, nor it | gives you an easy and out of the box solution to string | containers together. Left unchecked, you have your | reproducible builds running in completely unreproduceable | magical build machines - that noone really understands | how it all works. | | Did a migration of a few hundreds of pipelines from one | server to another and it exposed a lot of dependencies we | didn't know we had. Plugins, jars, packages installed in | build machines, you name it. | | If you must use Jenkins, please try to avoid Groovy to | the max, write anything that's non-trivial as an | executable (even if it is a bash script) and call it from | the main pipeline. Use containers if you can to avoid | build machine dependencies. Try to use declarative | pipelines too unless your jobs are very simple, and avoid | the 'script' blocks. Do not use the scripting pipeline to | avoid inviting groovy to your home. | | You can thank me in a couple of years. | kerblang wrote: | Just to contradict the complaining about groovy scripts: | I reduced something like 100 jobs to 2 using groovy in | jenkins, and it has been a godsend. I'm not having any | problems with it. | | Mind you, the Groovy stuff was implemented as an | afterthought, and if you aren't handy with Groovy (I am) | it can be challenging to learn. But compared to the | horrible GUI-driven alternative, it was a no-brainer in | the end. | | Really, the more you're doing CI, the more you want | scripts - doesn't have to be Groovy. I'd honestly be | perfectly fine just doing things with a bash shell on a | vanilla linux install. I only use Jenkins because my team | insists on it, for what? So we can put a web UI in front | of CI. I'd even tend to agree that with supply-chain | attacks being what they are, and jenkins being a never- | ending fountain of security patches, putting a web UI in | front of CI isn't worth it. | | But at least the groovy part makes life bearable. | wmfiv wrote: | You're looking for TeamCity, | https://www.jetbrains.com/teamcity/. | secondaryacct wrote: | And jenkins is centuries behind Teamcity. | | My company extracted us from github+teamcity paradise to | force fit us to gitlab, it's not going well. Try both and | for real, build a real project pipeline and see if that | works for your dev before moving to either. | rossmohax wrote: | I never worked with Teamcity, but created a fairly | complicated Gitlab CI pipelines. What do you miss in | Gitlab CI? | skofgar wrote: | And here I am planning on replacing Jenkins with GitLab | CI.. do you really think Jenkins is better? Do you have any | examples or thoughts you can share? | cyberpunk wrote: | Your plan is solid (source: building ci stuff for >10 | years). I wouldn't really suggest much else, although | argo is getting pretty good if you're deploying to k8s, | I'd still keep gitlab around for creating your images. | orf wrote: | We did a talk on it, happy to answer any questions. It's | definitely worth it. | | A lot of our Jenkins issues came down to "we are not very | good at managing Jenkins", but even if we where the | massive jump in productivity, flexibility and team | independence we saw after rolling it out makes me believe | it's just better. | | https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=k83hTlb9pMc | swozey wrote: | Github makes you do a ton of goofy side work to get simple | things you'll expect in Gitlab/etc to work. Want to check | out multiple repos? You'll need someone with org admin to | create a service account and to manually pull each repo in | a CI step with that service accounts token. This means tons | of people are using their own PATs to get around "who is | the github org admin?" sort of stuff. | | I could go on and on, Github Actions are horrid compared to | Gitlab. I wish, wish wish I could go back but I don't have | that power here. Github doesn't have scoped issues like | Gitlab, the issue board is so lacking, "projects" is stale | and featureless so many things. | | But I AM the one who deals with the aftermath. I've spent | days fixing one simple github action and I have plenty I | don't even wind up deploying they're so problematic. | rossmohax wrote: | No idea why you've been downvoted. Gitlab CI is | lightyears ahead of Github Actions, it's a fact. | swozey wrote: | I came the opposite direction from most I think, I | started with Gitlab and k8s back in 2015 and I just wound | up in a Github Codepipeline workflow. Unique experience. | reayn wrote: | I think the CTO's reasoning comes from that while GitLab is | competitive in terms of usage and features (actually offering a | more complete CI experience imo), it's influence is still | relatively miniscule in comparison to GitHub. | | I wouldn't be surprised if you tried asking random people in | public or in a university whether they know GitHub or GitLab | and came to the conclusion that GitLab basically does not exist | for many people. | | Especially for newer programmers, the vast majority | tutorials/educational courses and whatnot probably don't even | mention any alternatives to GitHub, much less an explicit | reference to GitLab. | | I say we just give it time, GitLab as a company seems like a | way more inviting environment to me and if they keep up the | good work GitHub may have to start acknowledging them more. | paxys wrote: | They are similar products but target different market segments. | Github wants public open-source projects, Gitlab wants large | enterprises. | 41209 wrote: | In the same way the Nintendo Switch and Xbox Series X aren't | competitors. | | Many hard core gamers will have both. My Switch is for Smash | Bros and the Advance Wars reboot. Advance Wars was one of my | favorite games as a kid, and I'll pay 300$ for a machine just | to play it. | | The Series X also plays games, but it's a completely different | experience. No one expects Switch quirkiness on an Xbox, and no | one expects 4K gaming on a Switch. | | GitHub is for your public portfolio. Gitlab is for getting | stuff done once your GitHub portfolio lands you a decent job. | | GitHub is synonymous with programmer portfolio, but it's CI/CD | system is rather primitive. | halfmatthalfcat wrote: | Actions are close If not better than Gitlab's CI. I moved | from Gitlab to GitHub Actions because they offer OSX runners | too, game changer. | 41209 wrote: | Are you using enterprise Gitlab? | | I don't think Gitlab is a serious player outside of | enterprise clients. But that's where the money is. | skeeter2020 wrote: | This is also where MS pushes Azure DevOps because it is | inline with their subscription approach for Enterprise | Office, Project Management and DevOps. It is really easy | for a company that already pays for Office 365 to add on | Azure DevOps. It's a lot less easy for the teams to adopt | it, but we all know you sell to the front office, not the | back. | 41209 wrote: | Azure assumes you aren't already using AWS. | | You can only sell so much to the front office, if it's | significantly harder to get things working on Azure, new | features are going to ship later if they do at all. | maineldc wrote: | I think the grandparent is referring to Azure DevOps | which is a Git / Issues product like Github and Gitlab, | not Azure Cloud. Azure DevOps is "fine" though I feel | like MS is pushing Github and will deprecate DevOps at | some point in the coming years. | jjeaff wrote: | Seems pretty serious to me. I was running my entire CI/CD | process with gitlab.com and deploying to k8s clusters | before GitHub Actions were even launched. | bastardoperator wrote: | I don't think it's a serious player at enterprises | either. MSFT is giving away GitHub Enterprise to sell | Azure and Visual Studio licenses coupled with other | perks. GitLab can't compete on that level and they lose | to GitHub/MSFT on a fairly regular basis. | iechoz6H wrote: | gitlab-runners are also installable on OSX (MacOS)[1] | | 1. https://docs.gitlab.com/runner/install/osx.html | halfmatthalfcat wrote: | Yes, if you have OSX boxes available or leverage things | like MacStadium but Github allows you to leverage their | MacMini farm. | ksec wrote: | I am probably wrong in this. | | I do think they are in a different market though. In that | despite there is a Github Enterprise Product, the self host | market shares are going to GitLab for one reason or another. | i.e I would not be surprised if GitLab is actually winning in | Enterprise / Big Spending Client self hosting Market. | | For Github, it seems most of its strength is in their SaaS, | contractors and SME which trends towards this solution. Your | personal contribution to Open Source as well as profile / | portfolio would also live on Github like on a Social Network. | | And I can see both Github and Gitlab continue to evolve their | strength for at least another 5 years. Generally speaking I | dont see how Gitlab could ever compete with Github on SaaS | given the advantage M$ has with Azure and DataCenter | infrastructure as well as social reach. While Github wont have | an easy path to evolve into something that compete directly | with GibLab on self hosting solution and their trend is to move | towards Azure Cloud solution offering to further gain synergy | with other Microsoft Enterprise products. | | I do wish Gitlab put _lots and lots_ of work into performance | though. As in performance improvement measured in order of | magnitude, not small percentages. | tombert wrote: | I remember in 2014, a coworker of mine talked me into creating a | Gitlab account, claiming "it's basically just Github, but you get | free private repos". | | I liked it, used it occasionally, but didn't care much about it | until Github was purchased by Microsoft. I didn't have a problem | with Microsoft buying Github per say, but it made me realize that | Github _could_ be bought, and it wasn 't some kind of glorified | charity. I don't think MS has done a bad job with Github at all, | but the very fact that the biggest home of open source itself | isn't open source made me uneasy. On the day the MS buyout was | announced, I moved all my Github repos to Gitlab. | | Gitlab, while still a for-profit company, at least believed in | open source enough to release the source code for their core | product into the wild, and have proven that they can be | successful doing it. I'm extremely happy that they've managed to | create a pretty outstanding project that I am happy to use, and I | just bought three shares to prove my dedication to it. ___________________________________________________________________ (page generated 2021-10-14 23:00 UTC)