Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Gitlab cancels plan on tracking user behavior on GitLab.com

gitlab.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

31–40 of 285 posts

Re: Gitlab cancels plan on tracking user behavior on GitLab.com

#31

Post by benatkin »

zapita wrote: post #9
tyteen4a03 wrote: post #2

This comment, from the CFO, is particularly nasty: https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab/merge_requests/14182#no...

You may or may not agree with that comment, but it is not nasty. What is nasty, on the other hand, is the vitriolic reaction to it. So far I count 16 "middle finger" emojis, including one with the subtitle "incompentent or malicious CFO". In what world does a disagreement over the right level of telemetry justify this kind of behavior? It's mind-boggling to me how entitled and aggressive the open-source culture is al…

This doesn't have anything to do with it being open source. It's a separate movement called Open Company, which was tried by Gittip/Gratipay. It's mostly irrelevant to the open source-ness of a product whether the company's website is open source.

Re: Gitlab cancels plan on tracking user behavior on GitLab.com

#32

Post by falcor84 »

zapita wrote: post #9
tyteen4a03 wrote: post #2

This comment, from the CFO, is particularly nasty: https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab/merge_requests/14182#no...

You may or may not agree with that comment, but it is not nasty. What is nasty, on the other hand, is the vitriolic reaction to it. So far I count 16 "middle finger" emojis, including one with the subtitle "incompentent or malicious CFO". In what world does a disagreement over the right level of telemetry justify this kind of behavior? It's mind-boggling to me how entitled and aggressive the open-source culture is al…

Gitlab is a wonderful company, but it's still a for profit company, it's not a charity. Everything they're giving away for free is part of the business model, and particularly part of their user acquisition approach. They, and many other companies, have discovered that the open source (or in this case "open core") approach can be very profitable.

I'm not advocating in favor of rudeness, but the same reasoning goes for the middle finger gesture. It's an emoji that Gitlab have (I believe) deliberately included in their commenting mechanism. As far as I understand, it acts as a way to categorize users' anger and vitriol in a much more sanitized manner than if the users were to type their sentiment into the comment box. In general, allowing and encouraging negative feedback of specific parts of the service helps drive user engagement and demonstrably makes good business sense.

If users feel entitled and free to speak up, it's because there is a lot of competition in this area and they can easily leave. The fact that users are providing this feedback to Gitlab, rather than just deleting their users is a sign that they still trust the company and the service, want to keep using it and to drive it to be better.

Re: Gitlab cancels plan on tracking user behavior on GitLab.com

#33

Post by rvz »

swoongoonz wrote: post #5

remember when everyone was bailing on github because of evil microsoft?

Most of everyone's main reason was that GitLab was "open source" and also supports free software. As much as they claim to do, I'm afraid that by being partially owned by VCs, they are at the mercy of pleasing those who may conflict with these ideas in favour of adware such a telemetry or ad-tracking.

A very principled move from GitLab to revert this, but I think that GitLab's trusted is damaged due to this.

Re: Gitlab cancels plan on tracking user behavior on GitLab.com

#34

Post by bachmeier »

zapita wrote: post #19
bachmeier wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"At this point I don't understand why anyone in their right mind would go to the trouble of making their product open-source. It's just not worth it." Umm...that's their business model. It's not an act of generosity. It was a decision that they thought was in their best interest. Do you also think Facebook and Google are making their products free out of the goodness of their hearts?

I don't believe I said anything about their motives.

But you said "I don't understand why anyone in their right mind would go to the trouble of making their product open-source." The "trouble" of going open source is the same trouble as any other business expense, whether that is developer time, security audits, etc. If that's Gitlab's business model, and open source really was their only choice for a sustainable business model, it's not hard for me to understand why they went open source. Your phrasing only makes sense if they were doing something they didn't need to do.

Re: Gitlab cancels plan on tracking user behavior on GitLab.com

#35

Post by falcor84 »

Could someone here please explain to me why Gitlab's product managers would be so interested in client-side analytics in the first place? From my familiarity with their service, almost every operation requires an ajax call, or a full page refresh. Is there really that much value for the product managers in these additional analytics?

Re: Gitlab cancels plan on tracking user behavior on GitLab.com

#37

Post by nessunodoro »

rvz wrote: post #33
swoongoonz wrote: post #5

remember when everyone was bailing on github because of evil microsoft?

Most of everyone's main reason was that GitLab was "open source" and also supports free software. As much as they claim to do, I'm afraid that by being partially owned by VCs, they are at the mercy of pleasing those who may conflict with these ideas in favour of adware such a telemetry or ad-tracking. A very principled move from GitLab to revert this, but I think that GitLab's trusted is damaged due to this.

I think it will bring them under more scrutiny and rightfully so. But this sounds like a misunderstanding, both of the GDPR and user sentiment, enforced without discussion from the top. They responded quickly, humbly, and transparently in reversing the decision. I'm not sure about long-term erosion of trust, although this may harm subscription levels or contract negotiation in the medium term

Re: Gitlab cancels plan on tracking user behavior on GitLab.com

#38

Post by stiray »

jbk wrote: post #27

We received an apology email at the same time, well written, explaining what they did wrong, apologizing, promising to do a post-mortem, promising to not send to 3rd party trackers, and saying they did a mistake and waiting for feedbacks on the issue tracker. And with very little BS in the mail. Such level of transparency, of apologizing and clarity, especially written at the first person "I am truly sorry." is very…

What should really be praised... Without further, congratulations to everyone protesting against this gitlab move. This is something that should be done years back when google started with its tracking, same with facebook. This was the behaviour that should be seen each and every time some company wants to take advantage of its users. But to my sadness it is rarely seen. So once again congratulations to each and every gitlab user that did anything against their move.

Re: Gitlab cancels plan on tracking user behavior on GitLab.com

#39

Post by igreulich »

I don't see where it is canceled. The closest thing I see to canceled, is postponed.

From the update: 'We will not activate user level product usage tracking on GitLab.com or GitLab self-managed before we address the feedback and re-evaluate our plan.'

That leaves a lot of wiggle room.

Post reply on HN