I comparison shopped Gitlab vs Github a few years back, and it was a joke: Gitlab killed Github on features and price. They still do. I'm not overly attached to either platform, but clearly Github has ridden on their laurels hard for a long time and Gitlab has not.

No comment on the merit of one vs other but with experience selling software, sometimes fewer features is better (lets you target better initially.)

If Github were a startup trying to get a solid MVP together, sure. However, Github was charging premium prices for an enterprise-grade product, but they were missing a super basic enterprise feature: they weren't able to connect LDAP groups to Github groups.

Having the resources of Microsoft and a vision you want to execute on might be why they allowed themselves to get bought.

All of the founders except one were already gone, and the remaining one left immediately after the acquisition closed. It wasn't about executing a vision, it was about cashing out.

I did say "might be" :-)