I think the biggest thing is the context switching between different projects. I have open source projects that I wouldn't be able to move to GitLab as I would have to coordinate the move with all the other collaborators and make sure the users of the repository are aware that the new code will be in GitLab.

Gitlab doesn't have even basic notification centre, people been asking it for years.

Github API integration is stellar, API token permissions can be configured granularly, Github apps marketplace is awesome way to start using third party services.

First class integration experience is opposite from Gitlab goals, they try to be everything and capture every single usecase and it shows .

Hi, we do believe in the single application offering the best long term user experience and outcomes, but do understand that all of our features may not work for everyone. This is happens for a variety of reasons (completeness, migrations, specific project requirements, etc.)

Because of this, we do offer our API and the ability for our community to contribute integrations directly to the codebase. We have a pretty rich set today, you can see at: https://docs.gitlab.com/ee/user/project/integrations/project...

We're also working to further improve our integration options, with a dedicated team: https://about.gitlab.com/direction/ecosystem/. This team will be responsible for our broader API, an upcoming SDK, as well as continuing to improve our existing integrations like JIRA and Jenkins. This team is just getting under way, but I wanted note our investments here.

> Github API integration is stellar, API token permissions can be configured granularly, Github apps marketplace is awesome way to start using third party services.

PAT granularity has indeed been a pain point, and we should be solving this soon by offering the ability to restrict them by groups/projects: https://gitlab.com/groups/gitlab-org/-/epics/182

Integrations go both ways. While Gitlab debates how to strip down Junit XML test result processing or represent arbitrary artifacts , Github has Checks API https://developer.github.com/apps/quickstart-guides/creating... where any third party system can provide feedback on a pull request and even veto it's merge.

Gitlab has many strengths, but integrations is by far the weakest one.

It's a barrier not just because of the sign up process which might only take a minute or less.

It's the ongoing thoughts that go through your mind like using github 99% of the time but having to context switch to a completely different app / UI for that 1 other project that uses gitlab. Unless that 1 project is incredibly useful then most of the time you'll talk yourself out of signing up or even browsing the repo (let alone contribute to it).

It's almost like people who use mailing lists for bug reports. It's such an out of place / cumbersome thing to sign up for vs filling out a github issue that you've done a 100 times already.

The power of familiarity is real. It takes astronomically sized benefits to get people to switch and from what I've seen gitlab has not done that (not because they are bad, it just hasn't happened yet) and the proof is in the results. If they did offer a massively better service than github then people would have already switched for open source projects.

You might be right but it sounds pretty thin. Are developers really roaming the internet aimlessly in search of something to develop on, and decide based on whether it's hosted on github or gitlab? That's not consistent with my experience, I use gitlab, bitbucket, github, gnu savannah, etc, due to various scattered projects and I don't find that the git hosting platform even registers as a consideration when finding projects to contribute to.

On switching -- from GitHub, yes you might need some compelling reasons to go through all that resetup work. Migrating to GitLab from some ageing bespoke system is a much easier choice.