HACKER Q&A
📣 JonathanBeuys

What Happened to Gitlab?


I used GitLab in the (not so distant) past, and it always was like GitHub. A web based collaborative software version control system on top of Git.

Today I visited gitlab.com and it now redirects to about.gitlab.com which looks like a sales page for an enterprise SaaS product.

It has a "Get free trial" button which leads to a "Free 30-day trial".

What happened? Is GitLab not a place anymore where you can publish open source code so everyone can fork and contribute?

Is Microsoft's Github the only gang in town now?

  👤 dnsmichi Accepted Answer ✓
GitLab team member here. Thanks for the feedback.

When not logged in, gitlab.com will redirect to about.gitlab.com which hosts the website [1] and the handbook [2]

At the top menu on the right, `sign in` will bring up a form to log into GitLab.com. After login, the default dashboard shows an overview of projects, etc. and you can use the main navigation. Tip: "Your work" on the left menu is the first iteration of a new navigation experience, released with 15.9. [3]

The mentioned redirect will not happen when logged in, or by visiting a project namespace directly, for example https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab or https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org

To download GitLab and install it in a self-managed setup on the website, follow `Resources > Get Started > Install` to see the available packages for Linux, and cloud-native installation (Kubernetes, cloud) [4]

[1] https://about.gitlab.com

[2] https://about.gitlab.com/handbook

[3] https://about.gitlab.com/releases/2023/02/22/gitlab-15-9-rel...

[4] https://about.gitlab.com/install/

👤 rurban
I tried to add some clisp patches to it's gitlab repo today. It's a GNU project, and the maintainer didn't do github, so he had no github actions. But previously there were plenty of CI pipelines on gitlab. Now there are none anymore, and a reminder that the free tier for CI pipelines will last only for 1 month.

So I reactivated my github fork again, and am running the CI jobs there. Without CI it's useless. GNU should really move to a proper platform, with a proper CI. Even if it contains javascript.

👤 skilled
I don't know the exact specifics, but I would imagine Gitlab has no chance of competing with GitHub, so they've made the decision to focus on a specific type of client.

I think the closest alternative to GitHub that has active users is Codeberg, but it is a relatively small community.

So, as you say, GitHub is pretty much the only game in town unless you've organized yourself to be part of IRC, mailing lists, and self-hosted version control systems.

👤 jjgreen
Plenty of open source on GitLab, you can easily use it commercially without charge too. There are "enterprise features" that you can pay for if you want, fair enough, these people need to eat.