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Comment by pmilot | Hacker News Reader

This attempt by the Gitlab folks to ride the Github dissatisfaction wave seems a little low-brow. Why respond to a letter that's not addressed to you? I would have preferred them to simply post an honest "Why you should migrate from Github to Gitlab" article. The tone just seems a little devious to me.

By the way, we're using self-hosted Gitlab at work and we love it. This isn't a knock against the actual product. In fact, I think Gitlab has improved tremendously in the last 18 months. I just wish they would be a little more up-front about their marketing efforts.

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  > This attempt by the Gitlab folks to ride the Github dissatisfaction
  > wave seems a little low-brow.

There's a github dissatisfaction wave?

Anyway, opening sentence of gitlab's open letter: "The letter of GitHub’s open source community is clearly not addressed to us, but we’re thinking a lot about the issues that were mentioned in it."

Does that cover your concerns?

I think if github was the free software entity, and gitlab had no free software edition available, then the tone would be, as you suggest, totally inappropriate. However given the arrangement is the other way around, it seems quite reasonable they would hop onto this issue at this time, especially given the very clear caveat quoted above.

"Wave" might be too strong a word, but I've seen three or four posts on HN in the last few days that were pretty critical of Github's closed source nature and insufficient transparency.

I'm not sure why offering a free software edition somehow gives you a pass. Both Github and Gitlab are commercial entities as far as I know.

Anyway, my concern wasn't a big deal, I was just a bit taken aback at the opportunism. In retrospect, I think my reaction was a bit overblown.

Fair enough. I feel like there's been stories / sentiment along this line for a while, though apart from Microsoft's ChakraCore announcement last week (?), the only two specific stories I recall from last year were about github's valuation (US$2B) and when they threatened to remove someone's repository because it contained the string 'retard'.

You're right that both github and gitlab are commercial endeavours - obviously very much in the same space - so I'd expect them both to pop up in any discussion about bug & feature trackers, community involvement, etc - especially if there's the potential to improve their business.

On the other side of the coin, I'm curious why Github seems to often get a pass by the free software community.

> Why respond to a letter that's not addressed to you? I would have preferred them to simply post an honest "Why you should migrate from Github to Gitlab" article.

That's basically what they did. They said "hey, you have these issues with GitHub, we're covering them, AND we listen to the community".

I think it's great that they responded to it, since it proves they actually listen and care about what their audience thinks.

> This attempt by the Gitlab folks to ride the Github dissatisfaction wave seems a little low-brow.

I can hardly imagine a better outcome. Now both GitHub and the developers have a choice to make; GitHub can either ignore the complaints or take them into account, and people can either continue using GitHub or start using GitLab (or something else). Nothing better than informing people in a kind, respectful manner.

Since they have employees and apparently are an ongoing business concern I would be worried if they didn't try to get their name in the conversation. If they let this huge discussion go by the wayside silently then they would be incompetent business people.

It may seem low, but I welcome the competition. While we enjoy certain brands it helps to keep them honest with healthy competition.

I think, that GitLab staff wrote respectfully, in an open manner.

> I think Gitlab has improved tremendously in the last 18 months.

I agree, IMO it's already better then github - I know people will disagree on that, but I find the UI way better - Easier to find things and navigate for someone who doesn't work in github very often (milestones for instance).

I think GitLab is a reaction to the problems GitHub has, to me it IS the response to the letter, though maybe not the one you'd first expect!

Yes, that's sort of the point I'm (badly) trying to get across. I think the product speaks for itself. That said, I may have misinterpreted the tone of the article.

It reminds me of the way Google and others try to glom their brand onto cultural events.

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