GitLab acquires Gitorious [LWN.net]

GitLab acquires Gitorious

Posted Mar 4, 2015 14:53 UTC (Wed) by pabs (subscriber, #43278)
In reply to: GitLab acquires Gitorious by TMM
Parent article: GitLab acquires Gitorious

What is your business model?

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GitLab acquires Gitorious

Posted Mar 4, 2015 15:36 UTC (Wed) by TMM (guest, #79398) [Link] (8 responses)

We don't really have a business. We want to provide a service for people who value software freedom highly. The strategy is to run software with as small of a runtime footprint possible so that we can comfortably run thousands of users on a very small budget. We're expecting that by the time we need to scale out to the next several thousand users our community can sustain the bandwidth and server costs through donations. This only works if we can sustain many, many users on small budgets. Currently we can.

GitLab acquires Gitorious

Posted Mar 4, 2015 17:13 UTC (Wed) by vonbrand (guest, #4458) [Link] (7 responses)

Sorry, but the money to pay for hardware, bandwidth, and people to make it all run and work reliably enough for somebody to trust their stuff to the site has to come from somewhere. That is what is being called "business model" here.

GitLab acquires Gitorious

Posted Mar 4, 2015 17:18 UTC (Wed) by TMM (guest, #79398) [Link] (6 responses)

We pay for it out of our own pockets. We have no desire to make money of off this project, although it'd be nice if eventfully it could at least be sustained through donations. Currently the monthly bill for the setup is easily within 'hobby' budget. If you don't feel comfortable using the service then feel free to not! :)

GitLab acquires Gitorious

Posted Mar 4, 2015 18:35 UTC (Wed) by riking (subscriber, #95706) [Link]

I hear Patreon is a good platform for collecting donations.

What you should do is you set up a "milestone" for "Covering Costs" and have the "pledge rewards" be "Feel good about yourself" stuff, maybe a star next to your name on the site or something, but nothing that requires shipping.
Basically, avoid making promises, because you don't know if you can keep them yet.

Here's an example of what I'm talking about: https://www.patreon.com/brucewillakers

GitLab acquires Gitorious

Posted Mar 5, 2015 21:35 UTC (Thu) by prokoudine (guest, #41788) [Link] (4 responses)

I hate to break it down to you, but while your intentions are respectable, your approach doesn't look sustainable. You'll run out of money before you know it.

GitLab acquires Gitorious

Posted Mar 9, 2015 11:53 UTC (Mon) by wookey (guest, #5501) [Link] (3 responses)

Why are we being down on people running a Free service? Since when did having a good business model become more important than running free software?

It seems to me that gitorious being killed by gitlab is not a good thing. I've used gitorious (and avoided gitlab) precicesly because one was free software and one wasn't. It's depressing how many free-software people don't care at all and just use github by default.

GitLab acquires Gitorious

Posted Mar 9, 2015 13:44 UTC (Mon) by vonbrand (guest, #4458) [Link] (2 responses)

Since not having a clear view of how to fund said free service, it won't last. Yes, even "completely free" setups like the FSF or Debian have ways to get the monies to make ends meet.

GitLab acquires Gitorious

Posted Mar 10, 2015 14:23 UTC (Tue) by anselm (subscriber, #2796) [Link] (1 responses)

What's wrong with letting these people have a go at what they enjoy, as a hobby? As long as they're up-front about the fact that there are no long-term guarantees I don't have a problem with what they're doing. (Incidentally, what about the stated long-term prospects of Gitorious when it was new? Didn't keep people from putting their stuff there.)

In any case, if their service really takes off and they don't want to call a moratorium on new users they can still look for additional funding. Not everything needs a “business model” from the very beginning. You may recall that the Linux kernel didn't have one at the start, either – and one could argue that it still doesn't have one today, just a dedicated fan base with reasonably deep pockets.

GitLab acquires Gitorious

Posted Mar 10, 2015 16:34 UTC (Tue) by vonbrand (guest, #4458) [Link]

Who says I have anything against them, or them enjoying their hobby? My point is that I can't rely on their hobby, and that is a shame. I might want to, but can't.