121–130 of 258 posts
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Is Gitlab 100% open source?
Opensource isnt such a problem the software should be great, i fail to see how Gitlab is better than Github.
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
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!
> 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.
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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?
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?
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.
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.
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.
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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&...
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…
Any takeaway lessons for evaluating future FOSS startups? Like maybe place higher weight on rate of adding new users?
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.
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…
Dont worry, as a corporate user, it's a nightmare: it wont last.
I’m personally extremely pro Source Hut but it’s not ready yet: https://sr.ht
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…
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.
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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.
> 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…
It has its merits for search and discovery.