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Comment by john_cogs | Hacker News Reader

I work at GitLab.

Our Open Core business model is part of our 3 year strategy [1] and something I consider one of our key strengths. As a member of the Community Relations team, I may be a bit biased. :)

We acknowledge the risk of "Fork and Commoditize" [2] on our list of biggest risks but believe that risk is reduced because we're application software instead of infrastructure software.

1 - https://about.gitlab.com/company/strategy/#2-build-on-our-op... 2 - https://about.gitlab.com/handbook/leadership/biggest-risks/#....

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> believe that risk is reduced because we're application software instead of infrastructure software.

Why do you believe this? My project uses self-hosted gitlab (ancient version) and I frankly have a very hard time seeing it as anything other than infrastructure. Maybe we just don't push our use of gitlab a lot (to be fair, we don't push it at all).

> Why do you believe this?

GitLab's co-founder and CEO goes into the details in this talk: https://www.heavybit.com/library/video/commercial-open-sourc...

The link I shared in my last comment goes into detail on how we view the differences between application vs infrastructure.

To your point on your usage - it's certainly possible that folks use GitLab in different ways and that our thesis does not apply to each use case.

Hi John--thanks for sharing these links. I do wonder if there is a fundamental difference between applications and infrastructure. Maybe it's the fact that applications tend to involve a greater share of non-engineering users (and therefore a greater reliance on someone else to host and manage the service)? Food for thought. GitLab is a great company, and I've read a lot of your strategy documents; it's a wonder you publish so much in the open, and I'm grateful for it.

Thanks! That is great to hear.

We detail the differences between infrastructure and applications in link #2 in my previous comment. If you have any suggestions on how we can improve that section, I'd encourage you to create a MR to update the page. Just click the "Edit in Web IDE" link at the bottom to get started. :)

* Probability is reduced; the impact is the same.

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