I recently move to gittea[1] for the very reason that I dont need 90%+ of Gitlabs features. Also Gitlab chews up RAM and IO, while gittea is barely noticeable even on a low end server. [1] https://gitea.io/
For example, recently the number of characters before line-wraps in the MR diff view changed. Not sure if this was intentional or accidental. I know two companies using Gitlab, both based the max-line length in their style-guide on what fit the diff-viewer. I guess Gitlab became a worse tool for code-reviews for them with that change.
"You need to optimize for the people not using your product yet because it is missing features." doesn't sound very fair to current users, and I don't think that will work long term.
I've asked Victor to look into the max line length change.
But if you go to User Settings > Preferences, you can select between Fixed vs Fluid layout width. Do you recall making any changes here recently?
Here’s an issue with some discussion on the design of fixed vs fluid options. https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-ce/issues/27347
At the same time I think the issue you link really highlights what some people have been saying: stable quality of the core product hasn't had the focus that customers would like it to have. Apparently you changed the line-wrapping behaviour twice in a year, without even realising that 1) you changed it, and 2) that some of your customers rely on this being stable. Of course you could argue that it was silly to rely on this behaviour, and that the new behaviour is in fact an improvement. But personally I think functional stability is important to all customers, and the fact that this was not a deliberate change is odd.
Obviously such a small change will never drive away customers, but I do think quality is the difference between having users and having users that are also ambassadors that will recommend your product.