How GitLab took on GitHub (and won over developers)
Want to know how GitLab grew to 30 million users and over 2000 contributors building GitLab itself…here is the story…and the 4 key things you can apply to your own business and community.
The video details the incredible journey of GitLab from its inception to becoming a global success. GitLab’s growth to over 30 million users and its global community of fans is highlighted, along with key milestones and strategies that contributed to its success.
GitLab started on October 8, 2011, when Dmitri Zappa, Roja, and Valeri Coff committed the first piece of GitLab code. The project gained early traction when a Dutch Ruby enthusiast posted about GitLab on Hacker News, drawing attention from developers worldwide. This momentum led to the creation of GitLab Enterprise Edition and the incorporation of the company.
In 2014, GitLab faced stiff competition from GitHub, Bitbucket, Subversion, and Launchpad. However, GitLab’s open-source nature set it apart. Unlike GitHub, which was proprietary software, GitLab was an open-source platform built on the open-source GIT project. This openness resonated with developers who valued accessible code and community collaboration.
Joining Y Combinator: In 2015, GitLab joined Y Combinator, gaining clarity on business development.
Seed Funding: They raised $1.5 million in seed funding, which fueled further development.
Conversational Development: GitLab introduced “Conversational Development” in their GitLab master plan livestream, emphasizing collaboration across the software engineering lifecycle.
GitLab’s open-source model made it easier for companies to test and integrate GitLab, in contrast to the more complex process with GitHub. They rapidly implemented requested features and focused on community engagement, attending meetups, conferences, and hackathons, and supporting new developers.
GitLab’s transparency was exemplified by releasing their entire company handbook online when they had just 10 employees. They also publicly debugged a major outage in 2017, demonstrating their commitment to openness.
Series D and E Funding: In 2018, GitLab raised $100 million, achieving a $1.1 billion valuation. In 2019, they raised another $268 million.
IPO: GitLab went public in 2021 with a market cap of $11 billion.
GitLab effectively built two distinct audiences: developers who used the platform and the contributor community. They maintained a strong relationship with their contributors, emphasizing openness and transparency, which built relentless trust and contributed to their success.
Key Takeaways
* Audience Clarity: Understand and serve your audience effectively.
* Openness: Default to open, not closed, fostering transparency and trust.
* Authenticity: Maintain individuality and innovate outside the typical corporate playbook.
* Collaborative Vision: Build your vision together with your community, treating them as teammates.
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by Jono Bacon
linux foundation
Don't get me wrong, github was a nice step up from sourceforge, but it was clearly opinionated in a really awkward way. If you hack ruby in vim, I bet its UI feels completely sensible. But to a python and emacs native, it is torture. You can't even disable or configure their confusing keyboard shortcuts, which are bound at top level. I went to bitbucket until they dropped mercurial support and replaced their noscript UI with a SPA with no fallback.
What do I love about gitlab? I feel like it gives me options. Want to view diffs one file at a time? You can have that. Want to hide the tree summary when looking at merge requests? You can have that if you want. In github, I have no idea who or what is making these decisions. It just definitely isn't the user.
I heard one summary of githubs UI as "we AB test everything, and always pick B".
i still use github for my project …. cause i find the ui way better and easy to use
So I am a NEET (not in education employment or training) but I have been self teaching myself code for two years. Thankfully, I do not have to worry about living costs due to living at the luxurious homes of my parents.
…That said, some notes for moe when I do start my own software (mostly games) company.
9:10 Well my audience would mostly be open source developers since most of the stuff I store on gitlab, and sourcehut (my primary) is open source projects. It is how I keep sane. But I admit, most of it just forks of previous open source things I use.
9:35 Already ahead of you. Right now, my main projects are a fantasy console/lang and a programming language. I actually will probably be mirroring the two to gitlab from sourcehut as a redudant backup (I have had Arch systems break on me before because of my own cluelessness!)
10:10 This should be number one regardless if you are for profit, a co-op, nonprofit or a foundational trust. You want a prime case of a company that burn through goodwill faster then their authenticity allowed them? Unity Technologies.
10:40 This one is kind of the daunting one for me. I want to take advantage of CLI tools more like taskwarrior for my generalsoftware design flow and gitlab for more complex issues. I see huge projects set up CI/CD, issue tracking and I just kind of spin my head. Yeah,I can use git, but I try to keep my things minimal. Plus, part of it is a flexible schedule. If I get bored with any one project or I get stuck, I do another. (But only the other, I think having too many projects is a thing). Actually, it is why I want to mirror my repos to gitlab, CI/CD. I cant expect my software to work on Mac because I dont have a mac, but I can test for basically any other platform from Linux, Windows, iOS and iPad OS (ironically). Plus, even if I were to get one, I really don't like apple build quality in recent years from all across their products. Nor their prices. I am just lucky I have semi-recent tablets given to me as gifts/hand me downs…
The photo of DZ at 0:30 isn't the right photo, it's of somebody else (but I suppose with the same name).
Great video Jono! I ran across GitLab as an early Gitorious user and did lament them acquiring and shutting down that service. Through their openness, innovation, and deep thinking about the entire software development lifecycle and conversational development model, they totally won me over. I personally host my OSS projects on GL by preference, though of course GH is unavoidable if you have a wide touch with the open source world. And 👋from a fellow bzr/Launchpad/Canonical/Ubuntu outcast!
DUDE I use gitlab daily and it is 1000x worse, the UI is disastrous and awful UX in general. It looks like a 2000's IPB Forum UI
Asking for likes and plugging your community in the middle of the interesting part is very off putting, only watched about half, do what you will with this feedback.
I like how I can run my own gitlab server on my ESXI server. This way I get all the advantages of git and full control of my data.
I'm so confused of all these gits that I've only heard of this GitLab the first time in this video.. What are differences of the 3?
GitLab got me because:
1. I could do more for free, e.g. publish pages from a private repo without needing financial approval
2. CI/CD was implemented with shell scripts which made it easier to use (IMHO) than GitHub actions
it didn't "win"..nothing against gitlab, but saying it won is an overstatement to say the least.
How do you think microsoft aquiring GitHub plays into this? A lot of the open source enthusiast moved to gitlab after that I can imagine