The only “axe” I have to grind is the one I clearly stated: Gitlab is salting the earth for dev tools. You can’t build a business competing with someone who is using VC money to give away their product. This is all going to end badly when the music stops.
”can something be non-profitable for a decade and still be called a business?”
This is such a bizarre talking point...do you honestly believe that Gitlab is a better business? Their model is “just like Github, but with even more stuff given away for free!” And let’s not forget that Github has to compete with Gitlab cannibalizing the low end of the market. I’m sure that hurts margins.
Someone has to pay those Gitlab engineers who are writing the bulk of the code. At the very least, as soon as the dumb money dries up, the velocity of development on Gitlab will drop like a rock. In the worst case, you’ll get an conflicted corporate hydra, like mysql.