Almost Everything We Do Will Be Open • Hacker News Board

Re: Almost Everything We Do Will Be Open

#31

Post by nanny » Fri, Aug 07, 2015, 1:40 PM UTC

vezzy-fnord wrote: post #3

Announcement itself is fine. The way you contrast "open" with "proprietary" is a bit jarring. It should be free versus proprietary, but if you find that undesirable, then just go with open/closed. EDIT: Quite predictably, I got downvoted for asking people to use proper terminology and for promoting free software.

People just hate when you correct their semantics, don't take it personally. Many people also don't know the difference between free and open. Here's a popular article by RMS which explains the difference: http://www.gnu.org/philosophy/open-source-misses-the-point.e...

Re: Almost Everything We Do Will Be Open

#32

Post by RazzyP » Fri, Aug 07, 2015, 1:42 PM UTC

nadams wrote: post #25

_pmf_ wrote: post #6

It's hard to compete against GitHub. I hope they will get some traction so we have an alternative to GitHub once it gets bought by MS (and becomes the next SourceForge).

Why would Microsoft buy github? They have their own.

Can't beat em', eat em'.

Re: Almost Everything We Do Will Be Open

#33

Post by kasbah » Fri, Aug 07, 2015, 1:42 PM UTC

nadams wrote: post #25

_pmf_ wrote: post #6

It's hard to compete against GitHub. I hope they will get some traction so we have an alternative to GitHub once it gets bought by MS (and becomes the next SourceForge).

Why would Microsoft buy github? They have their own.

Why did Google buy YouTube when they have Google Video?

Re: Almost Everything We Do Will Be Open

#34

Post by mrmondo » Fri, Aug 07, 2015, 1:44 PM UTC

We've been enjoying GitLab for quite some time now, but I have to say with every new release they always seem to break something critical for us, there seems to be far too many regressions and many of them are not communicated evening with their paying customers - for example the latest one that's been causing us grief: https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-ce/issues/1974

Re: Almost Everything We Do Will Be Open

#35

Post by nadams » Fri, Aug 07, 2015, 1:44 PM UTC

nhumrich wrote: post #20

Just saw that gitlab now offers free hosting, you only pay for support (only if you want it). Do enough people really pay for support in order to keep gitlab from going under? Free software is one thing, but free hosting? It just blows my mind how they can offer such a thing.

> Free software is one thing, but free hosting?

Hosting basically boils down to the fact that ~98% of your users will use a small portion of your resources. This is why hundreds - even thousands - of users are shoved onto a single shared server (all without ever having a problem). Considering disk and bandwidth is cheap - it's really inexpensive to host users. 2% of your users will attempt to use 50% or more of your resources - and those are the ones that you kick to the curb or arrange some sort of payment.

I used to do free web hosting and now have switch to just free source code hosting.

A perfect example of this is this story [1]. I'm sure a good 90% of people who sign up for the free slack service only use a small blip of usage.

[1] http://blog.freecodecamp.com/2015/06/so-yeah-we-tried-slack-...

Re: Almost Everything We Do Will Be Open

#36

Post by jobvandervoort » Fri, Aug 07, 2015, 1:44 PM UTC

nhumrich wrote: post #20

Just saw that gitlab now offers free hosting, you only pay for support (only if you want it). Do enough people really pay for support in order to keep gitlab from going under? Free software is one thing, but free hosting? It just blows my mind how they can offer such a thing.

We do not make substantial money with GitLab.com.

It gives us the possibility to run GitLab on a very large scale. This helps us finding performance and scaling issues that otherwise would go unseen. In short, it allows us to make GitLab even better.

Re: Almost Everything We Do Will Be Open

#37

Post by KingMob » Fri, Aug 07, 2015, 1:46 PM UTC

davexunit wrote: post #9

This article uses a bit of openwashing to make "publicly viewable source code" seem "open". It's not. It's proprietary.

Perhaps it's just me, but when they said the enterprise edition was "publicly viewable source code", I assumed they just meant it was "publicly viewable", with no further rights implied.

I don't think they're really openwashing here, and the article was pretty clear to me. Besides, the community edition and CI code are both true open source.

Re: Almost Everything We Do Will Be Open

#38

Post by nadams » Fri, Aug 07, 2015, 1:48 PM UTC

jobvandervoort wrote: post #10

davexunit wrote: post #9

This article uses a bit of openwashing to make "publicly viewable source code" seem "open". It's not. It's proprietary.

It is, we don't intent to be vague about this. I hadn't heard of the term openwashing, but I understand the criticism. See also our license for our proprietary GitLab Enterprise Edition: https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-ee/blob/master/LICENSE And the license for our open source GitLab Community Edition (MIT Expat): https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-ce/blob/master/LICENSE

> You are free to modify this Software and publish patches.

> It is forbidden to copy, merge, publish, distribute, sublicense, and/or sell copies of the Software.

You might want to get a lawyer on the phone - because that seems contradicting to me. This is why you should stick with open source licenses that have been vetted by a team of lawyers already. You should check out the AGPL license.

Re: Almost Everything We Do Will Be Open

#39

Post by jobvandervoort » Fri, Aug 07, 2015, 1:48 PM UTC

mrmondo wrote: post #34

We've been enjoying GitLab for quite some time now, but I have to say with every new release they always seem to break something critical for us, there seems to be far too many regressions and many of them are not communicated evening with their paying customers - for example the latest one that's been causing us grief: https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-ce/issues/1974

We're actively working on finding a solution for this. We understand this is not a nice development for many of our users.

We do not want to inadvertently break the workflow / remove essential features without informing our customers in advance. And we will always work hard to ensure that if that does happen, we find a good solution for all parties.

If you do find that this is the case for you, as a customer of GitLab, please never hesitate to contact us through our support channels.

Re: Almost Everything We Do Will Be Open

#40

Post by KingMob » Fri, Aug 07, 2015, 1:49 PM UTC

nightcracker wrote: post #23

jobvandervoort wrote: post #10

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is, we don't intent to be vague about this. I hadn't heard of the term openwashing, but I understand the criticism. See also our license for our proprietary GitLab Enterprise Edition: https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-ee/blob/master/LICENSE And the license for our open source GitLab Community Edition (MIT Expat): https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-ce/blob/master/LICENSE

Well, you are. Let me read to you the definition of Open Source: > Open source software is software that can be freely used, changed, and shared (in modified or unmodified form) by anyone.

But that's the enterprise license, not the community license.

When they say "In fact, even our proprietary version of GitLab, GitLab Enterprise Edition, has a publicly viewable source code", I don't think they're implying it's open source.