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GitLab acquires Peach Tech and Fuzzit

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Re: GitLab acquires Peach Tech and Fuzzit

#21

I have a genuine curiosity about GitLab as a business: Are they actually growing much more in the mindset of developers since GitHub started doing some things right? I have personally always wanted alternatives and GitLab* is a good one, but the reason I can not say they are a great one is because somehow* their story to me feels too much "against GitHub" than their own story. GitHub made a lot of mess and eventually…

> This matters a lot because community is great power, whoever holds it, holds key to future mindshare.

Bitbucket and atlassian are still surviving despite not having any community presence on them. As long as bitbucket offers value(self hosting, CI, etc) and enterprises use them I think it'll be fine.

Re: GitLab acquires Peach Tech and Fuzzit

#22
post #11

That's cool, but I wish they'd polish the base experience a little bit first. As well as stop this 'everything on kubernetes' thing. Right now I need kubernetes for at least half of all Gitlab functionality, and I have no doubt this latest acquisition will be the same thing.

I doubt any of the existing GitLab (sast, container scanning, dependency scanning / gemnasium, etc.) security scans need Kubernetes cluster integration.

They are normal containerized Jobs, for which all you need is GitLab Runner with Docker executors.

Re: GitLab acquires Peach Tech and Fuzzit

#23
post #2

Also on https://devops.com/gitlab-adds-fuzz-testing-to-devsecops-too... and https://siliconangle.com/2020/06/11/gitlab-acquires-peach-te... We think that Fuzzing will grow in importance as security gets more focus in the software development process.

Anyone has any stats on the adoption of security scanning in general for devops projects? and fuzzing in particular?

Re: GitLab acquires Peach Tech and Fuzzit

#24

I have a genuine curiosity about GitLab as a business: Are they actually growing much more in the mindset of developers since GitHub started doing some things right? I have personally always wanted alternatives and GitLab* is a good one, but the reason I can not say they are a great one is because somehow* their story to me feels too much "against GitHub" than their own story. GitHub made a lot of mess and eventually…

Tried locally hosted Gitlab once. It was so cumbersome to install I doubt I'd ever try again without containers or proven installers.

Off topic anecdote on installing GitLab.

My university asked me to install GitLab on a 32bit Dell Server made circa ~2002 while I was a teaching assistant, because we were conducting a hands-on class of reimplementing TCP/IP and IT wanted everything we were doing airgapped off the school network.

Unfortunately the omnibus package is 64bit-only so I had to build from source... which was pretty hard. But I was only able to do that after figuring out how to upgrade from Ubuntu 8.04 to 16.04 with the only input being a CD (not even DVD) drive. I don’t remember why OTA upgrade was failing, I think the version was too old. Managed to get Ubuntu 12.04 or something thinned down enough to fit on a CD. From which network upgrade worked.

Whole process took ~20 hours over a few days. Craziest install I’ve ever had to do... University would have saved a bunch of money if they had just bought us a new small 64Bit server. Ah well.

Re: GitLab acquires Peach Tech and Fuzzit

#25
Gitlab looks more and more like SAP these days. That's not necessarily a bad thing, enterprises out there choose all-in-one solutions because they need tech that covers the most ground with the easiest budget allocation, POC efforts from internal buyers and streamlined consulting at the post-sale effort. But once in, Gitlab, differently from SAP or Salesforce, is customized from around instead of from within. Meaning, it's not a platform for DevOps, just a bunch of moving parts that you need to tie together. This leads to very fragmented installations, with CI/CD running partially from within repos (gitlab.yml), containers, runner environments, scripts and other dangling cables.

I've seen more than one company build their own, horrid adhoc internal DevOps apps with extraneous UIs to help devs navigate different Gitlab CI/CD configurations. That's where Gitlab should be putting their efforts, in building a solid platform for dev and ops taking code to production instead of acquiring middle-of-the-road in-between tech like Peach Tech and Fuzzit, that add complexity to the core offering without checking many boxes for the clients seriously on the lookout for app/api testing.

Focus on the platform, enabling integrated customization and implementation robustness while orchestrating the outside moving parts and a great plugin ecosystem. Then get that certification program going strong. Right now your competitor Github "are belong to" Microsoft, and MS, better or worse, sure can do the platform thing for the many sizes of businesses where the meat of your revenue is truly coming from.

Re: GitLab acquires Peach Tech and Fuzzit

#26

Gitlab looks more and more like SAP these days. That's not necessarily a bad thing, enterprises out there choose all-in-one solutions because they need tech that covers the most ground with the easiest budget allocation, POC efforts from internal buyers and streamlined consulting at the post-sale effort. But once in, Gitlab, differently from SAP or Salesforce, is customized from around instead of from within. Meaning…

> Gitlab looks more and more like SAP these days. That's not necessarily a bad thing

Unless you are talking about revenue or profit, then I don't think could you could give a worse insult

> they need tech that covers the most ground with the easiest budget allocation

I think this is the sales pitch of every software product. SAP does not come cheap, in terms of both software and the total cost of moving to SAP. Two classic examples of Lidl pouring 500 Euros into SAP and then walking away and Nike pouring $400 million into a SAP project that was such a disaster they lost $100 million in sales.

Re: GitLab acquires Peach Tech and Fuzzit

#27

Gitlab looks more and more like SAP these days. That's not necessarily a bad thing, enterprises out there choose all-in-one solutions because they need tech that covers the most ground with the easiest budget allocation, POC efforts from internal buyers and streamlined consulting at the post-sale effort. But once in, Gitlab, differently from SAP or Salesforce, is customized from around instead of from within. Meaning…

It might be a fallacy to compare GitLab with Salesforce or SAP. The user base is so different. Developers / engineers are a unique class of users who have high expectations but in their own distinct way.

However GitLab's overall strategy and roadmap is being validated by every step GitHub takes off late. Quite an amazing reversal of roles. Back in the day, GitLab was the "open source copy" of GitHub. Now GitHub is following GitLab's footsteps with their Actions (pipelines) offering, and everything that comes with that (code analyzers, security, deployments etc.) GitHub still has much catching up to do though in some areas.

Long term, competition is good for everyone.

(Disclaimer: GitLab employee)

Re: GitLab acquires Peach Tech and Fuzzit

#28

I have a genuine curiosity about GitLab as a business: Are they actually growing much more in the mindset of developers since GitHub started doing some things right? I have personally always wanted alternatives and GitLab* is a good one, but the reason I can not say they are a great one is because somehow* their story to me feels too much "against GitHub" than their own story. GitHub made a lot of mess and eventually…

> This matters a lot because community is great power, whoever holds it, holds key to future mindshare. Bitbucket and atlassian are still surviving despite not having any community presence on them. As long as bitbucket offers value(self hosting, CI, etc) and enterprises use them I think it'll be fine.

You see the today, but you miss the tomorrow. If you venture out on the Internet you will see people complaining against them fairly religiously.

Every large enterprise that fell, stood once.

Re: GitLab acquires Peach Tech and Fuzzit

#29
post #16

I have a genuine curiosity about GitLab as a business: Are they actually growing much more in the mindset of developers since GitHub started doing some things right? I have personally always wanted alternatives and GitLab* is a good one, but the reason I can not say they are a great one is because somehow* their story to me feels too much "against GitHub" than their own story. GitHub made a lot of mess and eventually…

Gitlab is much cheaper and for companies building closed source projects there’s no need to be using what the “community” is.

What is "much" with respect to companies?

If company X is paying 10 x (even low) salaries of USD 100K annual, do they want to save say $5K annual if developers do not want?

Re: GitLab acquires Peach Tech and Fuzzit

#30

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The Omnibus package is literally a one line install.

Historically their upgrades cause issues; I remember the time I upgraded our self-hosted installation and LDAP logins were broken, for example.

I've never seen anyone complain about the updates, in my own experience you can always update on day one without any issues.
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