Thanks, @PurpleFoxy! I tend to agree with @Fileeditview about the network effect and how GitHub has done a great job of helping OSS projects with visibility.
Like john_cogs, I'm also a GitLab team member, and am part of the Community Relations team. I run the GitLab for Open Source program. I joined about a year ago and am really impressed by how fast GitLab moves forward. We have a lot of awesome stuff coming up to make the product, and our community, even better.
With a release each month, we use our momentum to make big strides in the DevSecOps space -- so people can rest assured that we'll keep improving quickly! We like to build along with our users, and believe everyone can contribute to our product roadmap, and all aspects of our company (e.g. see https://about.gitlab.com/direction/).
I'm also happy to answer any questions about the GitLab for Open Source program john_cogs mentioned below (https://about.gitlab.com/solutions/open-source/). It's a great deal in that OSS projects get 50,000 CI minutes for free along with our top tier in SaaS or self-managed. Feel free to reach out to [email protected] with any questions!
Saw the note about GitLab (I work there) and thought I'd chime in.
For those who don't know, we have a GitLab for Open Source program which gives our top tiers and 50K CI minutes/month for free to OSS projects: https://about.gitlab.com/solutions/open-source/
@epage -- Unfortunately I can't speak to the branch flow or bots question. Perhaps someone else here can? Other answers are below.
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Re: CI --
We dogfood GitLab CI via gitlab.com -- so no need for integrations.
GitLab non-engineering teams use CI all the time because we constantly update the handbook to document all of our work.
I would love to see this practice more often in OSS orgs, and other companies for that matter. Having a handbook-first approach (https://about.gitlab.com/company/culture/all-remote/handbook...) really helps enable remote team collaboration and makes it easier for newcomers to jump in. I think OSS orgs have done a good job of recognizing the importance of documentation for development projects, but there's an opportunity to increase documentation around workflows and community operations.
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Re: tracking conversations on Diffs --
Admittedly, I don't have a lot of experience with this outside of GitLab. But maybe that's the point. It's easy to chime in on diffs on merge requests on GitLab, and one of my favorite features is "suggesting changes" where you can add in a suggested update to a diff and the author can choose whether or not to apply it.
I gave a presentation about cross-functional team collaboration using GitLab at GNOME's GUADEC this year. Here are the slides: https://events.gnome.org/event/1/contributions/70/ .. As a program manager, I'm generally really excited about this topic!
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Some of the features I talk about are not available as part of the Community Edition, but there's the GitLab for Open Source program which gives OSS projects access to our top tiers, plus 50K CI mins per month, for free.
I think Phabricator is a really powerful tool for engineering teams, but when you try to do more cross-functional team collaboration, it's not as user-friendly as GitLab.
I used Phabricator at a previous company and miss some functionality, like Phabricator's ability to show issue dependencies in a more intuitive and granular way -- but at that company, we had a lot of trouble getting the Design team to use Phabricator, for example.
As OSS communities continue to onboard newcomers, they're faced with a generation that expects modern interfaces that are user-friendly. Having user-friendly tooling also helps promote diversity of OSS communities since it's easier to onboard people with all sorts of backgrounds, since the technical adoption barrier is lowered.
I think GitLab is a clear winner here since it's user friendly and designed for cross-functional team collaboration (GitLab dog foods their own product in all departments of the team, so you have HR, Marketing, Finance, etc all using it, in addition to the full product teams).
Full disclosure: I work at GitLab as the OSS Program Manager. Part of the reason I joined was because I feel really strongly about GitLab's ability to lower the contribution barrier and get more people involved in OSS.
I added another comment to https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=23686803 about case studies we hope to do about this. So while we don't have any to point you to today, we hope to have some in the near future.
Another thing that we hear from people considering a move to GitLab is that they really like how fast GitLab moves (one release per month!), and how it works with the community to keep improving the product. I recently joined as the Sr. Open Source Program Manager as part of the Community Relations team, and we're thinking a lot about how to continue to improve the experience for our community.
Just to add to this discussion, I work at GitLab and we have it on our roadmap to write some case studies about open source projects using GitLab. It's great to hear people's personal stories with regard to contribution being easier, and we hope that the case studies will serve as another reference for people considering a move to GitLab.
GitHub is an established player in the technology space and has done a really great job at fostering its open source community.
You're right that GitLab is trying to differentiate itself as the best place to scale software, and so it feels like its focus is on enterprises. That's where the open source strategy also currently aligns. GitLab is making the best platform to help open source projects thrive at scale.
I'm the new Sr. Open Source Program Manager at GitLab and was recently hired to build out our GitLab for Open Source program (https://about.gitlab.com/solutions/open-source/). This program allows open source projects to use GitLab's top tiers for free, and it provides assistance to large open source organizations throughout their migrations. We are providing open source projects with GitLab’s top-of-the-line features, that enterprises are using, to help them along their own journey.
As I mentioned, GitHub is doing a lot of great things, and I think that GitLab used to be perceived as merely playing a game of catch up. This is no longer where we are today. We're fast at iterating on our product and are blazing ahead on creating a platform that enables cross-functional team collaboration, and industry-standard features for the full software development lifecycle. We're working on a similar strategy with our open source offering -- so that we're not playing catch up, but are instead defining a new standard.
As an open-core company, we have an open roadmap for our product and for everything else we do. If you have ideas for our community relations team (I'm part of this team), we welcome your feedback! You can reach us via our forum: forum.gitlab.com, and via [email protected]. You can also read all about what we do and how we work here: https://about.gitlab.com/handbook/marketing/community-relati...
I've seen some really amazing things produced by the Inkscape community. One of my favorite demos was at GNOME Asia a few years ago where I saw a shoe company from Indonesia that exclusively uses open source tools like Inkscape to produce their line of shoes (https://coscup.org/2018/programs/using-inkscape-to-design-sh...).
It's awesome to see this Inkscape 1.0 release and it's incredible to think about how much impact Inkscape has had on the open source design tool landscape.
I'm the Sr. Open Source Program Manager at GitLab, btw. Thanks @Inkscape for being part of the GitLab for Open Source community!
At GitLab, we're really excited about this announcement! With GNOME, KDE and now Xfce moving to GitLab, we're definitely gaining traction as the preferred platform for open source projects to thrive at scale.
While all these orgs are very excited about hosting code on GitLab and about the CI/CD features we have, migration and consolidation of other tools is still ongoing for some of them. I think this is a big area of opportunity for GitLab since we're building a platform that allows so much more than just code hosting and great CI/CD. We're looking forward to becoming even better at other stages of the software development lifecycle so that GitLab can be used as the single platform to collaborate on building great software.
If anyone is interested in learning more about upcoming priorities for GitLab and its overall direction, check out: https://about.gitlab.com/direction/
And for others who are working on open source projects and want to try us out, check out our GitLab for Open Source program: https://about.gitlab.com/solutions/open-source/ Through this program you get access to our top tiers for free along with 50K free CI minutes.
Thanks for your feedback -- it's great to hear that you've had a positive experience with GitLab so far!
I'm the new Sr. Open Source Program Manager at GitLab and will be working on further improving the experience of the GitLab for Open Source program. I am also an internal advocate for open source projects and hope to explore ways that GitLab can help open source projects thrive at scale.
For those who are unfamiliar with the GitLab for Open Source program, you can find out more at: https://about.gitlab.com/solutions/open-source/. Through this program, we give our top tiers for free to open source projects, and that comes with 50K fee CI minutes and 95% off of support.
It's great to hear you've had a good experience with the GitLab for Open Source Gold license. I'm the new Sr. Open Source Program Manager at GitLab and I'm helping to revamp the program and also want to find new ways to make GitLab even more value for open source projects and orgs.
As a program manager, I'm personally really excited about this year's plans to build out more of GitLab's project management features. I think that once we're able to be more competitive with tools like Jira it will help create more buy-in at companies to adopt a single platform. Let's hope!
Thank you for advocating for GitLab among your spheres of influence, and for being part of the GitLab community! We appreciate it!
Like john_cogs, I'm also a GitLab team member, and am part of the Community Relations team. I run the GitLab for Open Source program. I joined about a year ago and am really impressed by how fast GitLab moves forward. We have a lot of awesome stuff coming up to make the product, and our community, even better.
With a release each month, we use our momentum to make big strides in the DevSecOps space -- so people can rest assured that we'll keep improving quickly! We like to build along with our users, and believe everyone can contribute to our product roadmap, and all aspects of our company (e.g. see https://about.gitlab.com/direction/).
For OSS projects considering a move, check out this GitHub vs GitLab Decision Kit: https://about.gitlab.com/devops-tools/github-vs-gitlab/decis... It outlines some of the key points to consider when evaluating a move.
I'm also happy to answer any questions about the GitLab for Open Source program john_cogs mentioned below (https://about.gitlab.com/solutions/open-source/). It's a great deal in that OSS projects get 50,000 CI minutes for free along with our top tier in SaaS or self-managed. Feel free to reach out to [email protected] with any questions!