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Comment by Gratsby | Hacker News Reader

We used Github enterprise at my previous job, GitLab at my current one. The only driver - GitLab is free. GitLab is painful if you have a lot of experience with Github. Feature comparison is pretty similar, but then again a feature comparison with any SVN web interface is pretty similar too.

I can't pinpoint it, but I'm much more likely to browse, review, and offer pull requests in a github instance. It's intuitive and I'm used to it.

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I can't say that I'm bothered with Gitlab's interface, even though I've had much more experience with Github. It uses more colors which sometimes has the effect of making actionable clicks stand out better. Commenting on committed code is one such example, for some reason that UI feels more clear to me. Also, on github I sometimes find myself looking for the commit list, which I always find immediately on Gitlab. IMO if you're used to both UIs it's either a wash or slightly in favour of Gitlab - my issues are purely in the backend.

How trivial it is to send/accept pull-requests with Gitlab? This is one Github feature which I'm highly dependent on. Unlike Mr. Torvalds, we all aren't experts in sending and managing signed pull-requests by emails. Maybe, I'll learn that one day, but Github's features have made me quite lethargic!

GitLab has merge-requests that work very similar. Accepting them should be easier since we have auto-merge on build success https://about.gitlab.com/2015/12/22/gitlab-8-3-released/

If GitLab is painful to use and that causes you or your employees to spend extra time dealing with that pain, then GitLab may be free as in speech, but it is not free as in beer.

It can still be "free as in beer" if there's side-effects; doesn't beer force you to deal with certain kinds of pain, even though it's free?

Negligible effects since I 2 drinks makes me stop enjoying alcohol.

My point is that if you are making a buisiness decision and only thinking of the invoices, you aren't counting your costs well.

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