why not use gitlab free version + runners on your kube?
Gitlab loses one-third of its value after company issues weak forecast
151–160 of 220 posts
Re: Gitlab loses one-third of its value after company issues weak forecast
#152Earlier quoted context omitted.
At $29 * 7 * 12 per year it became way cheaper for us to just piece together functionality we needed from nginx+cgit+homegrown database to store users/repos/acl/push info and a few git hooks written in a few lines of PHP. The cost is now independent of the number of developers using the system. So far it did cost ~1 month of paying for github in dev time and I can't imagine it costing much more when we'll want to add…
I mean I dislike the gitlab pricing increases, and we are kind of regretting sticking with them (especially since everyone on the Gitlab instance has to pay for a seat, even when not using any of the premium features) considering how Github is cheaper and has a higher release velocity at this point... But to be very fair, we never saw what you describe about memory leaks or slow ruby services. Migrations are also usu…
The company I'm currently at uses a self hosted instance, which due to our "security"* constraints we're grossly behind in updates. Not to say that's Gitlabs fault at all, but the amount of issues we have near daily is hilarious (if it didn't simultanously crush productivity).
That said, I recall issues with the Gitlab Enterprise Support / whoever we contact about our license etc, mostly to do with slow or poor communication. Requests would sit for a month before we got a reply, often dismissive or generally unhelpful, though we _were_ on an outdated version so I don't blame them.
I vaguely recall an email about support ending on self hosted instances? I can't recall the details, but I know it triggered an internal investigation into moving away from Gitlab. EDIT: Pretty sure I'm remembering self hosted Jira, a quick Google search shows Jira EOL but no Gitlab.
All of that said, I largely blame my company for the failures here. I wouldn't expect any company to support self hosted, outdated versions. The support issues were annoying, but I'm also not sure how much I can blame Gitlab for that. I'm also struggling to remember the details, so take this as one mans hazy annecdote.
* film industry, security by obscurity in the worst ways, leads to incredibly outdated and neglected tech (we only _just_ transitioned to Python3, and that's only the core services)
Re: Gitlab loses one-third of its value after company issues weak forecast
#153Sad to see. We really loved gitlab, but the pricing was so horrendous for what we were using and couldn't be scaled to non-tech employees (e.g. wiki or just reading MRs), so moved to github and haven't looked back.
Interestingly gitlab pricing influenced us to rethink our own pricing and we spent a month building out granular permission controls to allow sales to craft licenses bespoke to a client needs and charge less.
After a year our revenue has 2x and there's a nice upsell flow towards enterprise.
Re: Gitlab loses one-third of its value after company issues weak forecast
#154Earlier quoted context omitted.
At $29 * 7 * 12 per year it became way cheaper for us to just piece together functionality we needed from nginx+cgit+homegrown database to store users/repos/acl/push info and a few git hooks written in a few lines of PHP. The cost is now independent of the number of developers using the system. So far it did cost ~1 month of paying for github in dev time and I can't imagine it costing much more when we'll want to add…
The classic HN Dropbox comment, never gets old.
… sometimes, I do think it's merited. We switched to Github Actions for our CI and it's been … mixed. It was a hell of a lot of work to switch (GHA is significantly different than what we were moving from and … buggy) and even then, some of the pricing on GHA high. 24¢/GiB/mo for storage[1] which is like 8×? 10×? the sort of cloud baseline, 50¢/GiB data transfer [2], and the runners are similarly costly, IMO. I'm not sure if GHA wins out, in part because we're not done switching.
You can do self-hosted runners aaaand… welcome to infra/ops?
A little NIH syndrome would do the industry good. We need more stuff invented. The current stuff is mediocre.
[1]: https://docs.github.com/en/billing/managing-billing-for-gith...
[2]: I think it's only egress, and only from packages though?
Re: Gitlab loses one-third of its value after company issues weak forecast
#155We use Bitbucket at work. If we switched to some other forge next week I would not care. Git forges should be expendable.
The moat is CI, or more accurately that Gitlab CI is really good and using it requires hosting your code there.
This - I had to move to GitLab from GitHub recently and getting all the tests to run with the new agents was 99% of my time. Pushing a git repo to a new remote is nothing.
Re: Gitlab loses one-third of its value after company issues weak forecast
#156Earlier quoted context omitted.
The problem with a homegrown system is that every developer working within it will see it as a barrier rather than a cost saving. Whenever they can't do something that's trivial on Github/Gitlab it'll be a reminder that the company would rather save $xxx/year than make their job easier. Ultimately, having a simple, well-integrated, industry standard stack that includes the same tooling every other company uses is a p…
> it'll be a reminder that the company would rather save $xxx/year than make their job easier. My company has already made this crystal clear by switching to MS Teams.
Every morning we begin stand-up with a ritual, our whole team simultaneously muttering something arcane whilst manipulating the inner workings of Teams, hoping to appease the MS gods.
Shortly after the ritual is complete you hear a cacophony of "fucking teams wouldn't find my headset/camera", and the day begins.
Re: Gitlab loses one-third of its value after company issues weak forecast
#157Earlier quoted context omitted.
I mean I dislike the gitlab pricing increases, and we are kind of regretting sticking with them (especially since everyone on the Gitlab instance has to pay for a seat, even when not using any of the premium features) considering how Github is cheaper and has a higher release velocity at this point... But to be very fair, we never saw what you describe about memory leaks or slow ruby services. Migrations are also usu…
The company I'm currently at uses a self hosted instance, which due to our "security"* constraints we're grossly behind in updates. Not to say that's Gitlabs fault at all, but the amount of issues we have near daily is hilarious (if it didn't simultanously crush productivity). That said, I recall issues with the Gitlab Enterprise Support / whoever we contact about our license etc, mostly to do with slow or poor commu…
At least parts of what you say ring true in my experience following GitLab releases more closely (e.g. 1-2 months behind). I would highly recommend not self-hosting if you're going to go with GitLab. Performance issues will appear and disappear between updates, and sometimes on a whim and you're never quite sure what you did or didn't do.
I did find the support staff to be fairly responsive, but most of that time felt like me collecting diagnostic information with little actionable material, and sometimes I would have to explain the same thing multiple times in the same support ticket because it switched hands.
If you do still opt to self-host, dig into their documentation: there are little nuggets and hacks they use internally that you'll want to use to get the right performance out of it.
Re: Gitlab loses one-third of its value after company issues weak forecast
#158The problem with these SaaS companies is that they all eventually become seduced into whale hunting (big enterprise) and the product ultimately suffers as they are forced to adopt whale pricing and focus on endless enterprise reqs that the whales say they want (and most of the time don't actually use). The product drifts or stagnates for their core use case and then another startup comes along to 'disrupt' the market…
Here's their operating margin for the last 4 quarters:
Q1: -49%
Q2: -65%
Q3: -50%
Q4: -38%
So what you want is a business model where the company runs purely on VC money instead of on actual profit. SaaS companies like Gitlab usually can't operate at a profit with only free-tier and cheap-tier users - their overhead is way too high. Those tiers are a gateway drug offered at a loss to get people on board so that eventually the actually-profitable enterprise accounts will stack up enough to make up the loss. It's kind of a standard bait-and-switch pushed by the whole VC model. I'm personally hoping we see less of it now that the money spigot is drying up.
Re: Gitlab loses one-third of its value after company issues weak forecast
#159Earlier quoted context omitted.
The company I'm currently at uses a self hosted instance, which due to our "security"* constraints we're grossly behind in updates. Not to say that's Gitlabs fault at all, but the amount of issues we have near daily is hilarious (if it didn't simultanously crush productivity). That said, I recall issues with the Gitlab Enterprise Support / whoever we contact about our license etc, mostly to do with slow or poor commu…
At least parts of what you say ring true in my experience following GitLab releases more closely (e.g. 1-2 months behind). I would highly recommend not self-hosting if you're going to go with GitLab. Performance issues will appear and disappear between updates, and sometimes on a whim and you're never quite sure what you did or didn't do. I did find the support staff to be fairly responsive, but most of that time fel…
I absolutely would not opt to self-host, but unfortunately that's not my department. I agree about the performance issues, most of our issues were performance related and did seem quite random (though unsure if that was our self hosted instance or a Gitlab issue, sounds like it could be both).
I will admit I'm probably overly harsh on the support staff, and misrepresenting the support issues we had. I wasn't directly involved in most of it so I'm parroting what I've heard from coworkers that were more involved, which isn't the whole story. Though the times I was directly involved (in support requests) the experience mostly matched yours, with a couple (albeit rare) cases of slow replies.
In terms of self hosting I 100% agree, and anyone who is thinking of setting up their own self hosted instance should take note of your comment.
Re: Gitlab loses one-third of its value after company issues weak forecast
#160The problem with these SaaS companies is that they all eventually become seduced into whale hunting (big enterprise) and the product ultimately suffers as they are forced to adopt whale pricing and focus on endless enterprise reqs that the whales say they want (and most of the time don't actually use). The product drifts or stagnates for their core use case and then another startup comes along to 'disrupt' the market…
“Here is how platforms die: first, they are good to their users; then they abuse their users to make things better for their business customers; finally, they abuse those business customers to claw back all the value for themselves. Then, they die.”
https://culturalgutter.com/2023/01/25/the-enshitification-of...