Please don't introduce generic controversy like this with such a tenuous connection to the discussion at hand, especially with an unsubstantiated causal implication. We're just so unlikely to learn something in the inevitable flamewar that follows.

Understood.

I was just voicing my opinion on their business. You're right that is very spuriously related and I apologise.

Do we know it's unconnected? I know I've canceled my paid account over their political shenanigans.

Gitlab is a fully featured and ready full replacement for Github. Additionally, the Gitlab team is far more competent and listens better to user feedback.

I have never used GitLab, but I keep hearing lots of positive things. Is there anything they don't do as well or better than Github?

I'm a GitLab Community Advocate, so I'm biased, but off the top of my head:

- Performance, we're working on improving this for GitLab.com but right now it's slower than we'd like. If you run your own instance it'll be fine as long as you meet the recommended specs, GitLab.com struggles because we have so many users by comparison.

- Following users/social network-y things, we haven't really focused on this and don't have a way to follow another user right now (you can watch projects though).

- Third party integrations, we don't have as many third parties integrating with the product as GitHub does, though that's kind of to-be-expected.

And while I'm here, some things we do better (IMO):

- CI, we have it integrated into the product and have Review Apps plus GitLab Pages (which is better than GitHub Pages in some ways, e.g. in that it allows any static site generator and allows building sites dynamically via CI).

- Responsive design, GitHub has a separate mobile site that's not fully-featured compared to the desktop site. I browse on mobile _a lot_ so this is big for me, maybe not for others.

- Community Edition, which has a significant majority of the features of Enterprise Edition, is open source, MIT-Licensed, and anybody can contribute to it.

There are others, but I don't want to shill too hard :P

EDIT: Also I want to mention that we value diversity, I strongly disagree with the grandparent comment about how inclusivity shouldn't be rewarded.

> EDIT: Also I want to mention that we value diversity, I strongly disagree with the grandparent comment about how inclusivity shouldn't be rewarded.

I think that GP's point was not that inclusivity is bad, but that only hiring one group of people (be it minorities or not) is not something that should be rewarded (because it's counteracting diversity, and also being a bad hiring manager).

Just want to note that it's awesome that GitLab has community activists. You're really eating GitHub's lunch at this point, and it's amusing that they haven't noticed.

> Following users/social network-y things, we haven't really focused on this

Good. Please don't waste resources trying to be Facebook-but-for-devs.

> Also I want to mention that we value diversity, I disagree with the grandparent comment about how inclusivity shouldn't be rewarded.

Strongly agree with this.

I love Gitlab but your main priorities right now should be:

- Performance

- Performance

- Performance

You are right. Our focus right now is fixing the performance of GitLab.com. From Monday we're having a daily call to work on https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitaly to reduce the number of IOPS that operations require.

Although it's made a lot of progress the past few version the design/UX of Gitlab is a bit lacking.

We are working really hard on improving the design and UX of GitLab. We'd love to learn what we can do to make the experience better for you. Please let us know if you have any specific suggestions or problems that we can tackle. Feel free to comment on this issue (https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-ce/issues/25752) create an issue if that is easier (https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-ce/issues/new). Thanks!

UI. For UI, I would take github over gitlab any day.

Are there specific UI improvements we can make to improve your experience of GitLab? Thanks for the feedback!

You have to remove the fixed header in my opinion. It consumes 100px and I really see no reason for having it fixed.

That is something we are aware of and are working on solving. Thanks!

Site responsiveness, though they're working hard in that.

It's pretty ok if you host yourself(which is easy to do(on DO) thanks to the omnibus package).

Feature-wise it's great but the .com version can be really slow. A simple git push of a few small commits took me about 50 seconds earlier this week.

> how can they be losing money when they are literally the defacto code hosting site?

Because, to a first approximation, no-one is paying them for that hosting.

They've done enough irritating and questionable things that I've stopped paying them for my hosting and moved to other options for my paid, private repos.

"... who could replace them?"

Im hoping it's a company run by women and minorities, just for your sake.

Lets be clear, I never implied that women and minorities can't do tech or are in any way inferior.

But I'm not a fan of actively bringing bias into hiring. You're just being racist if you hire someone on the basis of them being a skin colour.

I don't support racist organisations of any kind.

If there is a company that happens to be funded and started by minorities and women is successful then that's fine, of course that's fine, I support them fully, but when they're being vitriolic about people regarding race and gender I'm not pleased.

This new mindset is dangerous and self defeating by nature. By hiring someone less qualified because they're a minority or woman just makes others resent them. Especially those who are minorities and/or women and they ARE qualified and have worked to get where they are (source: I'm talking about myself here).

Why did we work so hard to become great at our jobs to just have someone else less qualified plopped in next to us because of their skin color and gender? How is that fair? Trust me there is a silent resentment happening here.

Why can't we break down the barriers without being specifically hateful to white men? There is this assumption that it's not racism if directed towards them? How is it helpful to anyone involved?

Nice of you to assume that women and minorities are less qualified.

Especially in light of the numerous studies that show that people (men AND women) keep assuming on your technical skills solely based on genders.

and for a point of reference, I am a mixed race female engineer. So don't assume I'm some "white male bigot" boogeyman and address the facts of the point I'm presenting here.

You completely missed my point. Drastically.

I never said they (we) are less qualified, I was referring to the action of hiring a less qualified person based on the fact that they are a minority or a woman. When this happens, it angers EVERY more qualified person in the position. I'll break it down.

Candidate A is a white male with all qualifications. Candidate B is a black woman with far less, but is more "diverse".

When candidate B is hired, the others in the organization soon figure out they are less skilled or qualified. Then the white males in the marketplace have resentment towards them, BUT so does the black woman with great skills and qualifications who saw someone with less qualifications hired beside them, making the same wage as them.

Does that make sense?

But that is already how it works for quite a few white male engineers.

How many of us have had to work with "that guy" who interviews really well, but sucks at his job and coast for 6 months before people finally realise how rubbish at his job he is and he finally gets the boot. In more extreme cases they even get promoted over you and become your manager in spite of their incompetence.

>Lets be clear, I never implied that women and minorities can't do tech or are in any way inferior.

Let's be clear, that's exactly what you were implying.

>I don't support racist organisations of any kind.

This is an extremely huge stretch for you to make, just because they're trying not to favor white males.

>but when they're being vitriolic about people regarding race and gender I'm not pleased.

Like most of the anti-Github people in these comments are?

I think it's more that hiring and coddling ~600 white men is really expensive.

Any more ignorance/racism you'd care to share with us today?

Do they only hire women and minorities? A quick google turned up their "New Hires" blog (https://github.com/blog/category/hire) and that is made up of mostly white men. Granted the latest hire is from 2015. Is there something I'm missing?

The reality is that they have outreach programs to encourage applications from people who are women or minorities. But it doesn't take long for the kneejerk reaction to be that they hate white men.

I think they upset a lot of people back in 2015 by saying that white women are a massive barrier to progress [0], and that white men can't even be taught how to empathise [1].

It's not appropriate to bring up in the way it was, but it's not a knee jerk to say that some of them absolutely despise white people.

[0] http://uk.businessinsider.com/diversity-guru-discusses-white...

[1] https://twitter.com/_danilo/status/690601512813367297

Maybe they do...

http://i.imgur.com/7YaVYUx.jpg

https://twitter.com/_danilo/status/690601512813367297

can you substantiate that ideological extrapolation of yours?

As opposed to the hiring of people based on their demonstrated ability to contribute to your team. S/he's reacting to the perception that people are being hired primarily on, or being heavily credited for, their identities.

I'm not expressing an opinion on the idea, just outlining the debate for you.

> As opposed to the hiring of people based on their demonstrated ability to contribute to your team.

That is a super optimistic view of software engineering hiring. Hiring is a disaster and a crapshoot, and everyone knows it; don't pretend that processes with certain demographic qualities (any demographic qualities, honestly) are somehow rigorous. You hire based on a brief interview and some algorithmic trivia people forgot from college, or you give up on that and decide that hiring based on where someone went to school or who referred them to you is higher-quality.

The implication was clear enough - which is why I asked for substantiation.

1. does github in fact "only hire women and minorities" at the expense of superior, talented white men?

2. assuming #1 is true, what evidence is there that said hiring practices are at the root of their financial difficulties?

It's easy to throw out loaded statements. I don't think it's nuts to request clarification.

To "request clarification" about that is, in fact, "nuts", because (a) it's off topic and worse, and (b) it guarantees a flamewar. Please stop.

Why am I the only one being asked to "stop"? I didn't open this can of worms, and I'm seeing a literal few pages and multiple threads of back and forth from others on this very topic.

You're not the only one being asked to stop. It's good that you didn't open the can of worms, but bad that you fed them. In terms of troll effects, that's not a lot better.

Got a rigorous analysis anywhere backing the assertion that GitHub's failures are due to '"inclusive" practices'?

Do YOU have any rigorous analysis that "inclusive" practices like insulting white people by saying "white middle managers can't have empathy" in internal company presentations increases profitability and success at a company?

This account has been using HN primarily for political arguments. That's an abuse of this site, so please don't do that.

Nope, but I didn't make that assertion, so you appear to be strawmanning.

The way you phrased your question made it sound like you were snarkily implying that, yes. If that's not what you were doing, ignore my comment and move on.

The original OP was clearly flamebaiting with an ideological angle, no less ideological than the viewpoint it opposed. I was merely shining light to that by using that post's exact phrasing.

The snark you are inferring is completely imagined. Your original comment is also flamebaiting by adding a complete strawman that is also ideological. Please cease politicizing this discussion.

Well, I wrote about the problem some time ago albeit very briefly.

https://blog.dijit.sh/moving-away-from-github

Thank you for providing substantive information about the internal workings at GitHub.

It's almost as if I am judging a company by what they say. Shocking.

That wasn't a sarcastic comment. Since you actually worked at the company, I give you more credit than these outside political commentators.