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Announcing new tools, forums, and features

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Re: Announcing new tools, forums, and features

#251

Post by dijit »

mbrock wrote: post #244
eropple wrote: post #236

Earlier quoted context omitted.

YMMV, but I find sytse so hugely overbearing that I actively don't want to use GitLab because I don't want to encourage what I see as tacky, bad behavior. He and other GitLab staff can do as they like, but I'm not rewarding it.

I don't have a strong opinion but my gut feeling is that the GitLab staff is always asking HN what to do, which kind of makes me question the integrity of the company's own ability to decide. Of course it fits with the model of an open source company, but it still makes me skeptical intuitively. (I say this less as a criticism and more as feedback on how one random HN user perceives their presence.)

Thats fair comment, but how do you define the middle ground between sitting in an ivory tower and wondering what the next feature should be, between asking people who actually use your product in ways you wouldn't expect?

I release computer games, which are developed largely in secret and when they hit the market after 4-7 years people find all kinds of warts and issues that we never even thought of.

GitLab seems to be of the idea, "ask people what they need, make small incremental movements into making that happen and release those increments often so that people don't get jarred by changes"

I can support that, and I don't think it bears negatively on their integrity.

Re: Announcing new tools, forums, and features

#252

Post by mbrock »

dijit wrote: post #251
mbrock wrote: post #244

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't have a strong opinion but my gut feeling is that the GitLab staff is always asking HN what to do, which kind of makes me question the integrity of the company's own ability to decide. Of course it fits with the model of an open source company, but it still makes me skeptical intuitively. (I say this less as a criticism and more as feedback on how one random HN user perceives their presence.)

Thats fair comment, but how do you define the middle ground between sitting in an ivory tower and wondering what the next feature should be, between asking people who actually use your product in ways you wouldn't expect? I release computer games, which are developed largely in secret and when they hit the market after 4-7 years people find all kinds of warts and issues that we never even thought of. GitLab seems to…

I'm not sure. Maybe I would try to integrate the product suggestions into the product more, along with just reaching out to users directly and generally conducting the product in a typical open source fashion.

What bugs me a bit is mostly the constant presence on the Hacker News forum, with this somewhat aimlessly customer-pleasing tone: "What can we do better? How can we improve your experience?" etc.

It seems like a premeditated PR/marketing strategy, which might be working well, but it's still off-putting to me.

Re: Announcing new tools, forums, and features

#253

Post by irq11 »

FireBeyond wrote: post #94
Dobbs wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

github has self-hosting. It is a little pricey but that is not a product differentiator.

No-one said it was. But the answer of self-hosting is a perfectly valid answer for "Why the love for GitLab?" when one = $0 in licensing, and the other = > $2,500/year in licensing.

so basically, you like it because it's free.

doesn't speak well for their business prospects.

Re: Announcing new tools, forums, and features

#254

Post by rkangel »

mbrock wrote: post #244
eropple wrote: post #236

Earlier quoted context omitted.

YMMV, but I find sytse so hugely overbearing that I actively don't want to use GitLab because I don't want to encourage what I see as tacky, bad behavior. He and other GitLab staff can do as they like, but I'm not rewarding it.

I don't have a strong opinion but my gut feeling is that the GitLab staff is always asking HN what to do, which kind of makes me question the integrity of the company's own ability to decide. Of course it fits with the model of an open source company, but it still makes me skeptical intuitively. (I say this less as a criticism and more as feedback on how one random HN user perceives their presence.)

That's interesting, it's not how I read their interactions at all.

Asking the community for opinions is a great thing to do - you might get some good suggestions and the community then feel valued. That doesn't mean you need to do exactly what the community tells you, but taking it into account in the design process may help build something that the community actually wants to use.

Re: Announcing new tools, forums, and features

#255

Post by TeMPOraL »

dijit wrote: post #250
marklgr wrote: post #242

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I thought HN frowned on metacomments, and here it goes, talking about GitLab again, in a Github topic...

I'm in no way affiliated with gitlab, but I do like the product. But the facts are such: 1) GitLab is a YCombinator incubated company. 2) GitLab and GitHub are direct competitors 3) It's almost always relevant to the discussion, in this case; "How could it be done differently, how /has/ it been done differently" In this case I think it's fair to bring up the direct comparison of github and gitlab. The only thing I wo…

I enjoy threads like these; this is how healthy competition looks like. GitLab peoples' comments are relevant, and their discuss technical issues and merits of their solution, instead of comparing to GitHub ("we're better than the competitor!").

If this is how all marketing would always look like, I wouldn't hate it like I now do.

Re: Announcing new tools, forums, and features

#256

Post by TeMPOraL »

kareemm wrote: post #234
luikore wrote: post #229

Earlier quoted context omitted.

One project with multiple repos just adds unnecessary work of integration and management. Or, your definition of project is something big, vague and blurry. Some people are eager to divide their project into multiple repos in spite of git being a distributed version control system. Having many teams doesn't mean you should have many repos. Why not just let your team work on one small directory inside the repo?

> One project with multiple repos just adds unnecessary work of integration and management. Or, your definition of project is something big, vague and blurry. I think this depends on your job function. At Codetree we have a bunch of customers who need to see a project that spans multiple GitHub repos. The person who needs this view is the person responsible for delivery - usually a project manager, a product manager,…

I think such cases call for a more professional / serious project management tool. I mean, GitHub projects is just a webapp, one that lets you move some rectangles around with a mouse. I'll be happily using it to manage issues on my small open-source projects (that incidentally are usually self-contained within a single repo), but for anything bigger / more serious, I'd rather use an external tool.

Re: Announcing new tools, forums, and features

#257

Post by dijit »

mbrock wrote: post #252
dijit wrote: post #251

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thats fair comment, but how do you define the middle ground between sitting in an ivory tower and wondering what the next feature should be, between asking people who actually use your product in ways you wouldn't expect? I release computer games, which are developed largely in secret and when they hit the market after 4-7 years people find all kinds of warts and issues that we never even thought of. GitLab seems to…

I'm not sure. Maybe I would try to integrate the product suggestions into the product more, along with just reaching out to users directly and generally conducting the product in a typical open source fashion. What bugs me a bit is mostly the constant presence on the Hacker News forum, with this somewhat aimlessly customer-pleasing tone: "What can we do better? How can we improve your experience?" etc. It seems like…

Objectively, that's such an odd thing to be unsettled about.

Have we reached a point where all pleasing tones are considered marketing and PR? That we distrust people for acting earnestly?

It's in gitlabs best interests to be a superior product, right now they're an underdog, and their ubiquity on hackernews is not a coincidence, they're a YCombinator backed start-up.

Talking directly to people tends to focus the conversation too much without allowing outside perspective, you might want all of gitlab to be focused on CI, but I may think a casual CI integration would be more reasonable and likely a good solution is a middle ground- also, who do you ask? people rarely talk about their VCS unless it's relevant to discussion.

Re: Announcing new tools, forums, and features

#258

Post by mbrock »

dijit wrote: post #257
mbrock wrote: post #252

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure. Maybe I would try to integrate the product suggestions into the product more, along with just reaching out to users directly and generally conducting the product in a typical open source fashion. What bugs me a bit is mostly the constant presence on the Hacker News forum, with this somewhat aimlessly customer-pleasing tone: "What can we do better? How can we improve your experience?" etc. It seems like…

Objectively, that's such an odd thing to be unsettled about. Have we reached a point where all pleasing tones are considered marketing and PR? That we distrust people for acting earnestly? It's in gitlabs best interests to be a superior product, right now they're an underdog, and their ubiquity on hackernews is not a coincidence, they're a YCombinator backed start-up. Talking directly to people tends to focus the con…

I fully admit that I'm a cynical and cranky bastard.

Re: Announcing new tools, forums, and features

#259

Post by HelloNurse »

mbrock wrote: post #244
eropple wrote: post #236

Earlier quoted context omitted.

YMMV, but I find sytse so hugely overbearing that I actively don't want to use GitLab because I don't want to encourage what I see as tacky, bad behavior. He and other GitLab staff can do as they like, but I'm not rewarding it.

I don't have a strong opinion but my gut feeling is that the GitLab staff is always asking HN what to do, which kind of makes me question the integrity of the company's own ability to decide. Of course it fits with the model of an open source company, but it still makes me skeptical intuitively. (I say this less as a criticism and more as feedback on how one random HN user perceives their presence.)

Asking what to do doesn't mean doing what they are asked. Turning suggestions into software features requires a lot of skillful software design and marketing work. There's nothing wrong with deciding, among countless incompatible options, to evolve the product in ways that appears likely to increase revenue, while not seeking feedback would be an actual bad sign about GitLab's ability to decide (and improve).

Re: Announcing new tools, forums, and features

#260

Post by joshmanders »

sytse wrote: post #160
joshmanders wrote: post #74

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Indeed, when GitLab announced Kanban I tried to migrate, but it just wasn't as great as GitHub, this is the nail in my foot that keeps me at GitHub.

What can we improve in GitLab that would have convinced you to stay?

Hey styse! You guys are doing great, don't get me wrong, every time I try you guys out, leaps and bounds. My two biggest things right now are CI docs are very very sparse and hard to figure out as they are not similar to typical CI systems, at least the ones I used (primarily Travis). And the design is very unusual, it's hard to navigate around. For example on GitHub I can click my profile and boom, all repositories right there, on gitlab, i got to go through projects, groups and all this other stuff, it's just not straight forward.
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