Hacker News Reader

> Companies want to see your GitHub profile

Yes, but see, this is exactly what we ought to fight. No?

I don't want to be forced to host my open source projects at Microsoft. Or any place really. I don't think there should be any centralization for project hosting.

GitLab.com is not perfect neither, it requires users to run reCAPTCHA. This is forced Google spying for any GitLab users and therefore potential contributors.

I really want this fad that considers platforms hosting projects as social networks to end.

then set up a github account and put up a project that says "my stuff is hosted over here instead"

I should not have to open an account on GitHub. But okay, maybe-ish. However, my point is actually larger than this.

There's a whole ecosystem where your project doesn't exist if it's not on GitHub. For example, Hackoberfest, where only projects on GitHub are eligible (not that it necessarily a bad thing actually, but still, it really puts in the head of people that open source = GitHub) (edit: I see that they accepted GitLab in 2021. It's less bad than just GitHub, but still problematic). There are studies / research on software / open source that don't bother with projects not on GitHub. Libraries are often evaluated on the number of stars / forks / issues they have on GitHub.

These issues are all about the network effect.

> - Open-source contributors are on GitHub. The majority is not going to create a GitLab account just to fix a bug or open an issue in my little library. If you want community, it's on GitHub.

This is a double-edged sword, because it means that your project will receive a lot of trivial issues/requests. I've seen more than one complaint that the having to handle the amount of requests in an open source project made it more than a daily job than a enjoyable activity

Ideally you want to make it easy for people that care to contribute, but not too easy in order to avoid "spam".

> The majority is not going to create a GitLab account just to fix a bug or open an issue in my little library

FWIW, GL supports a lot of social auth providers, including GitHub: https://gitlab.com/users/sign_in/ (you may have to open that in an incognito window to see the login choices, but there are 5 of them currently)

That's in contrast to https://github.com/login which is "GitHub or GFYS"

> Companies want to see your GitHub profile

Does it matter where you link to in your resume?

I can't imagine someone open a URL only to realize it's not GitHub and close the page before checking out some repositories.

> The majority is not going to create a GitLab account just to fix a bug or open an issue in my little library.

Honestly, that sounds like a selling point. Having a road bump so that people who show up in issues are motivated should cut down on the zero effort drive by bug reports.

"hey guys, if it's a valid bug they'll still come find it, right?"

"we're not just cutting off the information we need, right?"

If you already know of more bugs than you have time to fix, then more bugs for the sake of more bugs aren't that valuable. And sifting through dozens of bug low effort bug reports, to try to find the one useful one isn't actually a productive use of time. And not every software project has the same concerns as every other one.

> If you already know of more bugs than you have time to fix, then more bugs for the sake of more bugs aren't that valuable.

We disagree quite strongly on this. In fact, I'm currently being burnt by an example.

I'm currently interacting with one of the big delivery websites. Think similar to GrubHub or Instacart.

Every so often the system auto-temp-bans me. I think maybe I'm falling afoul of scraper detection; it tends to happen when I am searching through stores because I need three obscure things and each store has two, looking for one that has all three.

This happened again two days ago. I was trying to get all the flavors of one particular brand of chocolate chip. I had gotten a bag as a substitute, and it was much higher quality than expected, so I wanted to try the others.

Problem is, the brand isn't common, and has 12 flavors, and the top-level search only shows 7 things.

"Just open in tabs!" Nah, the system thinks you're a bot scraping prices, and blocks you for seven days in a way that looks like you're perm-banned.

I'm sure they're drowning in tickets about their modest quality CSS and so on, but this ticket should still go in.

Tickets aren't of uniform importance.

That doesn't matter to an open source project without any revenue stream and no budget for a help desk.

And it sounds like you're doing something niche that shouldn't be prioritized, and eliminating abusive scrapers is probably worth it to them even if it means that they're losing your business. If they're not fixing it, that is a message to you that your use case doesn't matter to their business model. What you want is a way to demand you get attention. You are precisely the kind of squeeky wheel that wastes everyone's time.

> And it sounds like you're doing something niche that shouldn't be prioritized

Using the site for its main and sole purpose? No

It sounds like you're looking to apologize so that you can win

.

> If they're not fixing it, that is a message to you that your use case doesn't matter to their business

No, it's not. It's a reflection that their customer service isn't actually communicating with the engineers.

.

> You are precisely the kind of squeeky wheel that wastes everyone's time.

Please take your public guess driven judgements somewhere else, thanks. I just received a thankful email from their engineering department as a result of the HN comment making one of their engineers aware.

It's not clear why you felt the need to insult a stranger for saying "here's a situation in which ranking tickets can matter, even when there are already too many."

Thanks for your time. Have a good day.

No idea why you think this is a comparable situation then.

I've been a loyal gitlab user since before it turned into the absolute beast it is now. I even considered applying there because I like their values. Only problem is, I've never written a line of ruby. I really don't look forward to having to move to yet another platform. Will probably just host my own repo's if that time arrives.

> GitLab's quality started to decrease. More bloat (both in terms of UI and code size), slower and slower app whereas GitHub hit the sweet spot of keeping things simple while providing essential features that are fast.

Honestly, this is why I switched my previous company and my personal repos to Github. GitLab has always felt slow as molasses, with unintuitive UI.

I'm using both, and in both cases for both work and personal projects.

There are a few things which are better in GH, some are better in GL. Which one is which is really subject to taste (I prefer the review workflow in GL, I much prefer the simplified issues management in GH, but I got the exact opposite opinion from colleagues). GL used to have the upper hand with CI, but lately GH actions again improved enough that I don't mind it.

For a professional setup though, GL CE offers an escape hatch and can be a _huge_ cost saving measure if you ever find yourself needing it. Managing GL in a container is almost painless in the last couple of years. By contract we're actually running on an older GH plan due to plan cost increases we don't find reasonable. On that basis alone, GL seems a no brainer. Both GH and GL online services princing plans can have questionable costs in several scenarios.

GH can give your project wider visibility due to it's popularity, but I never had any any complaint from developers. I see issue reports coming in on GL even on obscure projects, and in most cases devs already have accounts on both platforms.

I do see somewhat less random requests for generic help on GL (as in "what do I need to do to install this?" which is answered in the README), but it's really hard to quantify seriously.

Just a quick note.

When I do hiring I will look at your any public code repo you put in your resume. I’m totally agnostic about where it is hosted.