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

The market figured out Gitlab’s secret

about.gitlab.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

61–70 of 71 posts

Re: The market figured out Gitlab’s secret

#61

Post by DreamScatter »

ken wrote: post #49

> At the time I believed we needed to have tools that are composable and that could integrate with other tools, in line with the Unix philosophy. Kamil convinced me to think about the efficiencies of having a single application. The Unix Philosophy is dead today, but I don't believe that's because of any inherent flaw in the principle of "composability". It's that we no longer have a good composition mechanism for th…

The Julia language can solve all those composability problems you are having, much of the package ecosystem is very composable. It is currently focused on scientific computing, but it is a full general purpose language.

Re: The market figured out Gitlab’s secret

#62

Post by SEJeff »

Aeolun wrote: post #51
SEJeff wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unless you want their enterprise features. Gitlab is open core.

The source for the enterprise features is still open, no?

No, the source for the enterprise features are not open.

https://about.gitlab.com/pricing/self-managed/feature-compar...

https://about.gitlab.com/install/ce-or-ee/

    License model
    GitLab is built on an open core model. That means there are two versions of GitLab: Community Edition and Enterprise  Edition.

    GitLab Community Edition is open source, with an MIT Expat license. GitLab Enterprise Edition is built on top of Community Edition: it uses the same core, but adds 
    additional features and functionality on top of that. This is under a proprietary license.
    
    For both versions: All javascript code in GitLab is open source. All javascript code written by GitLab is under the same MIT license.

Re: The market figured out Gitlab’s secret

#63

Post by SEJeff »

majkinetor wrote: post #58
SEJeff wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Unless you want their enterprise features. Gitlab is open core.

However, that core is REALLY BIG. I do not really miss any enterprise feature. I ordered enterprise edition only to support it and I never installed it.

Well a lot of enterprises care about things like user directories (LDAP) and the extra access control. Just because you don't need enterprise features doesn't mean that large enterprises (the target audience for Gitlab Enterprise) don't!

I'm not saying it isn't great stuff, it really is, but "it is all open source" is sort of a misnomer. It is open core.

I'm of the same opinion with Dave Neary on Open Core Software. He's a long time contributor to the GNOME Desktop Environment:

https://blogs.gnome.org/bolsh/2010/07/19/rotten-to-the-open-...

Re: The market figured out Gitlab’s secret

#64

Post by emilycook »

SEJeff wrote: post #62
Aeolun wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The source for the enterprise features is still open, no?

No, the source for the enterprise features are not open. https://about.gitlab.com/pricing/self-managed/feature-compar... https://about.gitlab.com/install/ce-or-ee/ License model GitLab is built on an open core model. That means there are two versions of GitLab: Community Edition and Enterprise Edition. GitLab Community Edition is open source, with an MIT Expat license. GitLab Enterprise Edition is built on top of Com…

GitLab EE is still source-available: https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-ee

Re: The market figured out Gitlab’s secret

#65

Post by SEJeff »

emilycook wrote: post #64
SEJeff wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, the source for the enterprise features are not open. https://about.gitlab.com/pricing/self-managed/feature-compar... https://about.gitlab.com/install/ce-or-ee/ License model GitLab is built on an open core model. That means there are two versions of GitLab: Community Edition and Enterprise Edition. GitLab Community Edition is open source, with an MIT Expat license. GitLab Enterprise Edition is built on top of Com…

GitLab EE is still source-available: https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-ee

Source available is not open source. Per the open source definition:

https://opensource.org/osd-annotated

It is cool that they're source available, but that's still not the same. Putting a disclaimer that you work for gitlab would also be appreciated.

Re: The market figured out Gitlab’s secret

#66

Post by the-dude »

msla wrote: post #40
the-dude wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There is no such thing as bad publicity.

> There is no such thing as bad publicity. I hear Osborne is going to release a new computer soon. It's going to be much better than the current one, so why bother to buy what's on sale now? Gerald Ratner says that some of the earrings his store stocks are as cheap as a prawn sandwich, and will last about as long. People are talking so... good for him, eh?

While the Osborne effect might be real, for Osborne itself it was probably a myth : https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Osborne_effect

Re: The market figured out Gitlab’s secret

#67

Post by joecot »

klaustopher wrote: post #56
joecot wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

We use Gitlab for work because the self-hosted version is free. For small companies Github is a pretty steep unnecessary expense, and we appreciate control over our own servers. Unless Github makes a self-hosted version there isn't really a comparison for us. To me Github is about the community. Lots of open source software and forks of that software, you can put your profile on your resume. Gitlab has more features…

I know the "free" price tag seems nice at first. How did you calculate in the cost for: - maintaining and updating your servers - updating the free software - backups - recovering from backups in situations where your servers fail? I don't think you get that for free? If you consider those costs, the price tag for a hosted solutions becomes more and more reasonable.

> maintaining and updating your servers

sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get dist-upgrade

> updating the free software

sudo apt-get update && sudo apt-get dist-upgrade

> backups

We setup a cronjob that backs up the server

> recovering from backups in situations where your servers fail?

We are able to recover in a reasonable timeframe. We take occasional server snapshots, and in the case of the machine completely going dark we could spin up one of those snapshots, dist-upgrade, and apply our git / Gitlab back and be back to normal.

Your concerns are good concerns for big companies. For small companies who don't need 99.99% SLA, running git/Gitlab on your own server is tremendously more reasonable than Github's paid plans.

Re: The market figured out Gitlab’s secret

#68

Post by icxa »

liammcnally3000 wrote: post #60
icxa wrote: post #14

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Not to heap it on...but ok who am I kidding I am heaping it on: I had a terrible interview experience with them. Basically there was a period on HN where every other post was about stupid hiring practices and how absurd some code interviews were. Well Gitlab embodied all of them. They phone interview quizzed me on several "gotcha" questions, and finally I was asked to describe Prototypical inheritance (JS), in which…

Hi, I am Liam a Recruiting Lead for Gitlab. I would be very keen to set up a time to talk through your interview experience.

Hi Liam, I think the comment captures the essence of what feedback I would have and I am not interested in providing anymore feedback, no offense I am busy, but appreciate your willingness to learn and grow, sounds like the company could have used a few more people like you at the time I interviewed (was 2 years ago now).

Re: The market figured out Gitlab’s secret

#70

Post by majkinetor »

SEJeff wrote: post #63
majkinetor wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

However, that core is REALLY BIG. I do not really miss any enterprise feature. I ordered enterprise edition only to support it and I never installed it.

Well a lot of enterprises care about things like user directories (LDAP) and the extra access control. Just because you don't need enterprise features doesn't mean that large enterprises (the target audience for Gitlab Enterprise) don't! I'm not saying it isn't great stuff, it really is, but "it is all open source" is sort of a misnomer. It is open core. I'm of the same opinion with Dave Neary on Open Core Software.…

You are right in general. Most open core tools do not let anything enterprise like into community versions. However, Gitlab is somewhat different. For example is that it lets you have LDAP/AD integration in core version. Compare that to lets say Mattermost which doesn't.

And yes, I need enterprise stuff, I just don't need enterprise stuff currently in Gitlab. Looks to me those stuff are created for really big teams and really big multinational companies. My company is 1200+ employees big with IT having around 70 people, and in that context I don't miss anything.

Futhermore, some enterprise features finish in core after some time. I have never witnessed the opposite in Gitlab.

Post reply on HN