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Comment by curun1r | Hacker News Reader

FWIW, despite the awkwardness of the pull request terminology, Gitlab's merge request terminology was one of the major reasons why we ended up choosing GHE over Gitlab. Pull Request, among developers, has become like Kleenex, Xerox or any of the host of brand names that are linked with the generic concept they implement. In most conversations, developers here have stopped even saying the words...it's just PR without any thought to why it's named that. Trying to force a switch to MR would have been a difficult transition. In the end, it was easier to just pony up for GHE.

It may seem superficial, but if there's some way that you could give users the option to surface the pull request terminology rather than merge request, even if it's just a configuration option, you may find people more receptive to your product.

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I tend to agree with you that "pull request" is the term everyone uses, and that the ship has sailed. Even when using GitLab, most people I know still use that term anyway... just like how in the southern U.S., every soda is called "Coke" even if it's a Pepsi.

That being said, you can't POSSIBLY be serious that this one piece of nomenclature drove the decision between GitLab Enterprise and GitHub Enterprise. The latter costs roughly 5 times more than the former! Either this is unbridled hyperbole... or else money is no object at your company, and it's weird that you were evaluating GitLab in the first place.

> The latter costs roughly 5 times more than the former!

And developers cost several orders of magnitude more than the software license.

The decision wasn't a matter of looking at features and making a logical decision. The decision was made by taking a sampling of developers and allowing them to test both systems and relying on their preference. They were unanimous that they preferred GHE. In drilling into their preference, the merge request nomenclature was the only issue that everyone mentioned they disliked.

And yes, the company wastes money like no other...it's part of the culture here and the result of having cash cow products that have very little competition. The only reason there was an evaluation was because one group inside the company was using Gitlab and another GH.com and the company decided to standardize on a single in-house solution.

>just like how in the southern U.S., every soda is called "Coke" even if it's a Pepsi.

Blasphemy. Atlanta can have their "Coke". Us North Carolinians drink Pepsi (born 1893 in New Bern, NC).

And to your point:

>The latter costs roughly 5 times more than the former! Either this is unbridled hyperbole... or else money is no object at your company, and it's weird that you were evaluating GitLab in the first place.

Never underestimate the ability of enterprises to over pay for a product despite the existence of cheaper, and arguably better solutions.

:) I made a feature request to add a new translation https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-ce/issues/13429

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