GitLab looks for users to CI to eye: Come join us on the happy path

While many cloudy companies aim for four nines of uptime, it was four ones for GitLab today as the source shack celebrated the release of version 11.11 with a chat with The Register. GitLab is known for its source code management and, more recently, its CI/CD tooling. Helpfully coinciding with Kubecon, the gang has emitted a …

[Charlie Clark]

Risks

There is a lot to like about GitLab but, as with all VC-backed companies, the management only has a limited say in the furture direction of the company. At some point the investors will want to cash in, either via an IPO or by selling to a competitor.

[Dan 55]

Re: Risks

Isn't the aim of most startups these days to get bought by FAANMG?

[Charlie Clark]

Re: Risks

Software ones, certainly. Uber, Lyft, and Tesla are looking to Detroit. I think the blitz scale strategy is all about growing big enough to be noticed but losing enough money to be able to be bought at a discount well below valuation. For normal companies this would often be considered fraud but its one of the nice parts of the JOBS Act (Bush II) that this kind of thing is fine for privately traded companies.

[Bronek Kozicki]

GitLab

I do like companies which make the core of their product open source. I also dislike products which aim to do too much, or implement simple functionality in complex way. GitLab ticks both these boxes, so I am really torn here - at this moment my preference for hosting of git repos is self-hosted Gitea. I tried GitLab first, but the overhead was not worth it.