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Gitlab S-1

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Re: Gitlab S-1

#181

Post by jupp0r »

ModernMech wrote: post #110
dcchambers wrote: post #38

I haven't personally had a compelling enough reason to move from GitHub to GitLab, so I mostly just use it to mirror a couple of my repos there in case people prefer to browse various open source projects via GitLab. Regardless, I think competition in the space is a great thing. GitLab has come a long way and there are certain things I really like about the company. For example, I love how they tend to do everything…

I'm the opposite actually. I do all my dev on Gitlab, and mirror on Github for the exposure.

Maybe this is the time for a big shout out to the creators of git for making use cases like these a first class citizen.

Re: Gitlab S-1

#182

Post by klik99 »

crazy_horse wrote: post #180
sillysaurusx wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t really think that IPOing is about acquiring more resources. The point is to get rich. The resources are the means to do that, and everything else is a happy side effect. Hopefully, yes, they will choose to do as you say. But the tickets didn’t language because they were resource constrained. They languished because they were worthless, in the monetary sense.

It'll get worse. This is a YC site so it's a dick thing to say but look at every YC company that got big. They might start out with nice ideas and bloviate a lot about bullshit (Reddit still has the tagline about staying for empathy - lol). But every single one of them gets worse after cashing out. They do not give a shit. It's always been about the money. If it weren't they'd have enough pride to make better softwar…

I think it’s about being the dominant player or not, as a long time employee of a very very well known and large company once complained to me “We care about the user experience, but only when we’re not doing well”. Gitlab will continue to impress as long as GitHub exists - I’d start to worry if gitlab “wins”

Re: Gitlab S-1

#183

Post by bink »

nixgeek wrote: post #137
Wronnay wrote: post #99

Last valuation was $6 billion, they initially wanted to go public in November of 2020 but because of COVID they delayed it. Doesn't sound cheap to me for a company who isn't profitable yet... (Microsoft payed 7,5 billion for GitHub and I think we can all agree that GitLab isn't used as much so nearly the same valuations seems a bit high too me)

Timing of the CFO joining is interesting to me. From the S-1, Brian Robins joined GitLab in October 2020, so the desire to go public may have been there but an IPO is an enormous amount of work and I can imagine goes much better with an experienced CFO at the helm who has done it before. Therefore, "because of COVID" sounds like a contributing factor certainly, but may not be the whole story.

IIRC they had announced they weren't going to IPO in 2020 several months prior to that change. So I wouldn't assume they just didn't realize the work involved until October. Maybe they post-poned the IPO earlier in the year because they decided they wanted to find the right person for the job.

Re: Gitlab S-1

#184

Post by zmmmmm »

snicker7 wrote: post #82

The big issue we have with GitLab is the pricing. Ultimate is literally five (!!!) times more than premium. And there are only a couple of features that we want from ultimate.

yeah ... I can't give Gitlab my money. We are ready to pay but the licensing model is just incompatible with our org. Very sad, I like the product very much but we are forced to keep coasting on the free version.

Re: Gitlab S-1

#185

Post by sillysaurusx »

crazy_horse wrote: post #180
sillysaurusx wrote: post #179

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t really think that IPOing is about acquiring more resources. The point is to get rich. The resources are the means to do that, and everything else is a happy side effect. Hopefully, yes, they will choose to do as you say. But the tickets didn’t language because they were resource constrained. They languished because they were worthless, in the monetary sense.

It'll get worse. This is a YC site so it's a dick thing to say but look at every YC company that got big. They might start out with nice ideas and bloviate a lot about bullshit (Reddit still has the tagline about staying for empathy - lol). But every single one of them gets worse after cashing out. They do not give a shit. It's always been about the money. If it weren't they'd have enough pride to make better softwar…

As a counterpoint, the data loss incident made me a fan. They didn't treat it as a funny mistake, I don't think -- I remember one comment from one of the Gitlab engineers of "everyone is very sad, but we're trying." Something in that spirit.

Anyone who's ever worked with production systems knows how absurdly easy it is to ruin them. Yes, it was careless, but they responded with class: they didn't fire the engineer that made the mistake. That would have turned me into a gitlab enemy.

Recognizing that a process is dysfunctional is one of the hardest things for any company to do. There's an incredible amount of corporate inertia preventing such recognitions from taking hold. Are you sure it wasn't worth applauding?

There's also nothing wrong with getting big, or getting worse. The trick is to get worse in the ways that matter the least.

Re: Gitlab S-1

#186

Post by tln »

klik99 wrote: post #182
crazy_horse wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It'll get worse. This is a YC site so it's a dick thing to say but look at every YC company that got big. They might start out with nice ideas and bloviate a lot about bullshit (Reddit still has the tagline about staying for empathy - lol). But every single one of them gets worse after cashing out. They do not give a shit. It's always been about the money. If it weren't they'd have enough pride to make better softwar…

I think it’s about being the dominant player or not, as a long time employee of a very very well known and large company once complained to me “We care about the user experience, but only when we’re not doing well”. Gitlab will continue to impress as long as GitHub exists - I’d start to worry if gitlab “wins”

GitHub seems to care about user experience even though they're winning though.

Re: Gitlab S-1

#187

Post by tyingq »

ModernMech wrote: post #163
oweiler wrote: post #159

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except Github Actions is leaps and bounds above Gitlab CI.

It really is, they one-upped Gitlab, and you can tell there is a clear difference in resources between the two companies. Yay competition! I especially like how you can run parallel builds on Windows, Mac, and Linux with one line of code with GitHub actions. What’s nice about Git as a distributed VCS is I can use both GitHub and Gitlab and get the best of both worlds very easily. I win either way, and neither can loc…

>neither can lock me in

That's true for the core git piece, but if you're a big enough org the CI/CD features, or issues, or pages, etc, could effectively lock you in.

Re: Gitlab S-1

#189

Post by stefan_ »

manquer wrote: post #171
stefan_ wrote: post #126

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Half sarcastic, half serious? I think the prevailing theory is that yes these companies are spending tons of money to get a little bit of money, but it's a one time per customer expense and that customer will still be there for many more quarters, paying monthly dues.

The theory is lot stronger/valid in enterprise sales like gitlab, customers take a lot of time to switch even if they are not satisfied with a product, there may not viable competitior with bespoke solution the same your current provider gives you etc It is far less true for consumer/SMB mid market products as cost of leaving there is not high.

Oh yeah, I think GitLab will make a fine company. Even if as a user of their product I routinely find it to be half-baked, but of course in enterprise the actual user is commonly the least important aspect of any deal.

Re: Gitlab S-1

#190

Post by dmurray »

ModernMech wrote: post #107
benatkin wrote: post #71

I'm grateful to GitLab for providing an alternative to GitHub, and an open source one. It's an open core product with the community edition providing a lot of value. Here are some community hosted instances: https://wiki.p2pfoundation.net/List_of_Community-Hosted_GitL... The CI system is quite powerful, and Travis CI's struggles before and after acquisition has shown that it's hard to host a major CI platform. I hope…

Yes, Gitlab has been leading the way for a while now, consistently introducing new features that Github eventually copies. It's a real testament to the power of competition. I first started using Gitlab due to free private repositories, which Github eventually added. Gitlab had free built-in CI/CD first, and Github eventually followed. I'm still on Gitlab these days despite Github catching up, and still enjoying feat…

These all sound like features that GitHub also had, but Gitlab needed to offer for free to gain users, rather than a technological superiority of Gitlab over GitHub. I don't think it's correct to interpret that as "Gitlab leading the way".

Note: I've preferred Gitlab, for exactly this reason

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