GitLab acquires Gitorious [LWN.net]

GitLab acquires Gitorious

Posted Mar 3, 2015 20:26 UTC (Tue) by ejr (subscriber, #51652)
Parent article: GitLab acquires Gitorious

A comment on the blog entry is noteworthy: "Technically we're only acquiring the assets of Gitorious and Gitorious AS will be liquidated. So it is not the same organization." -- Sytse Sijbrandij

Any code in Gitorious (AGPLv3) not copyright Gitorious AS cannot be used in GitLab (MIT).

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GitLab acquires Gitorious

Posted Mar 3, 2015 23:06 UTC (Tue) by scientes (guest, #83068) [Link] (11 responses)

But GitLab is ahead so it doesn't really matter.

GitLab acquires Gitorious

Posted Mar 4, 2015 8:18 UTC (Wed) by dakas (guest, #88146) [Link] (10 responses)

If they are "ahead", why was Gitorious able to run its free version on the server while GitLab reverts to a proprietary version for that?

That sounds like the free GitLab version is not considered suitable by GitLab itself for hosting large user and project bases.

GitLab acquires Gitorious

Posted Mar 4, 2015 8:52 UTC (Wed) by fishface60 (subscriber, #88700) [Link] (4 responses)

It's likely to be a marketing thing.
The open source GitLab has less functionality than GitLab enterprise, and they're using the free project hosting as promotion for their service, so they're going to promote the enterprise version, since that's what they want you to buy and it has more flashy features to show off.

GitLab acquires Gitorious

Posted Mar 4, 2015 22:38 UTC (Wed) by mathstuf (subscriber, #69389) [Link] (3 responses)

We're setting up the Community edition here and it's not like the CE is hobbled in any way (I haven't noticed much missing at least). Then again, we're a FOSS-y company, so maybe we just don't care about the Enterprise frosting features/use cases.

GitLab acquires Gitorious

Posted Mar 4, 2015 22:56 UTC (Wed) by ejr (subscriber, #51652) [Link] (1 responses)

git annex support exists only in the proprietary version, similar with support for git hooks.

GitLab acquires Gitorious

Posted Mar 4, 2015 23:29 UTC (Wed) by mathstuf (subscriber, #69389) [Link]

Well, we're using git hooks as well, but we are doing it by basically making the merge button inert (only select few have Master permissions; mainly the release team(s)). Instead, we have a bot which is controlled using commands (similar to bors for Rust) which does checks and the actual merge (with smarts to do submodule merging properly). As for git hooks we actually are using server-side, we have one which is implemented globally to deny *all* new branches on the main repos (to enforce a fork->merge request workflow).

Annex support would be NTH for our testing data, but getting all users to have git annex is the main hurdle there (we would need a bot to sync the data down and publish it somewhere *anyways* since git-annex on Windows is a PITA last I checked). The main hurdle for me implementing git-annex support if it came to that would be the fact that my Ruby skills are quite awful (I've set it up at home with gitolite already).

GitLab acquires Gitorious

Posted Mar 7, 2015 22:18 UTC (Sat) by murukesh (subscriber, #97031) [Link]

Proper support for LDAP groups is only present in the Enterprise version. That's the original reason why I turned to Gitorious, but after considerable fighting to get it install right on Ubuntu (not via the outdated docker image they had), I realised that Gitorious didn't support posixGroups LDAP groups (it needed memberOf). So skipped the bother and went to Gitlab CE.

GitLab acquires Gitorious

Posted Mar 4, 2015 8:53 UTC (Wed) by hunger (subscriber, #36242) [Link]

I'd say that they want to demo the full feature set to potential customers instead. They rely on selling their stuff, so they need to show off what they can do.

Plus many of those features are about making it easier to manage a large scale installation, so it would be kind of stupid not to rely on them on the (I would guess) largest installation there is.

PS: The community edition does run well, too:-) I use it on a small server at home to host a couple of private repos in-house.

GitLab acquires Gitorious

Posted Mar 4, 2015 10:06 UTC (Wed) by moltonel (subscriber, #45207) [Link] (3 responses)

According to the gitorious CEO, they were *not* able to run the free version of gitorious on their server : "Due to decreased income from on-premises customers, running the free Gitorious.org was no longer sustainable."

Sadly it seems that "FLOSS + network effect" is not enough to get enough people on the platform to sustain the company, and they feel the need to add proprietary perks.

That said, FLOSS gitlab is plenty good enough to run a service available to both in-house and external contributors. That's what we use in my company.

GitLab acquires Gitorious

Posted Mar 4, 2015 10:38 UTC (Wed) by hunger (subscriber, #36242) [Link]

I would not write off "FLOSS + network effect" yet, just because of gitorious.

You need to have a competitive product and gitorious just did not have that. The one advantage Gitorious had over github was the license, which is not enough to attract users. And without users no community, and without community no contributions.

An other show-stopper for building a community was the lack of communication. The blog worked best for me, but even there were really infrequent updates (check out blog.gitorious.org: There is not even a mention of gitlab at this time, last post being from Dec. 4th).

Without a community sharing the development burden it is no surprise that gitorious failed to keep innovating. That makes it impossible to keep up with the competition, making gitorious fall back even further.

GitLab acquires Gitorious

Posted Mar 8, 2015 6:17 UTC (Sun) by clacke (guest, #69542) [Link] (1 responses)

That's a misinterpretation. They weren't earning enough money selling on-premise services that they could afford providing an online service free of charge.

I asked gitlab/gitorious directly: gitorious.org is/was tunning the same AGPLv3 codebase as everyone else.

https://twitter.com/rolfb/status/574264361163825152

GitLab acquires Gitorious

Posted Nov 20, 2016 11:13 UTC (Sun) by catalinuxboie (guest, #112452) [Link]

Hi!

RocketGit will try the same path as Gitorious: AGPLv3 + free hosting (public AND private).
Let's see if anyone cares...

Disclaimer: I am the main author.
Site: https://rocketgit.com

GitLab acquires Gitorious

Posted Mar 4, 2015 16:28 UTC (Wed) by imgx64 (guest, #78590) [Link]

What's GitLab's policy on adding Enterprise-only features to the Community Edition?

In other words, if someone contributed code to GitLab Community Edition that adds a feature that only exists in GitLab Enterprise Edition, would it be merged?