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by kennyGitLab 2543 days ago
For a bit more about WHY we choose breadth over depth - We believe that the company plowing ahead of other contributors is more valuable in the long run. It encourages others to contribute to the polish while we validate a future direction. You can read more on our company strategy page - https://about.gitlab.com/company/strategy/#breadth-over-dept...

As open-source software we want everyone to contribute to the ongoing improvement of GitLab.
5 comments
rightisleft 2543 days ago
"We're Open Source!" isn't a valid defense when you have paying customers. That pitch sounds great for your VCs, but for someone who spends a portion of their budget on your cloud services - i'm appalled.

Gitlab is a SaaS company who also provides an open source set of software. If you don't want to invest in supporting up time - then don't sell paid SaaS services.

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godzillabrennus 2543 days ago
Your logic and reason have no place in VC land.

They need more users!

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jacques_chester 2543 days ago
> We believe that the company plowing ahead of other contributors is more valuable in the long run. It encourages others to contribute to the polish while we validate a future direction.

I feel like this is a non sequitur. There's no reason why breadth would increase outside contributions other than sheer surface area, but that relationship isn't very linear, especially if the surface area is being created by Gitlab rather than others.

Meanwhile, "polish" is often the unglamorous work which people typically don't want to do for free.

Try to imagine an exchange at Torvald's Bazaar and Emporium. Gitlabbers offer to work on the fun stuff and get paid for it. In exchange they ask everyone else to work on the boring stuff without being paid.

For some mysterious reason, this exchange fails to happen.

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bdcravens 2543 days ago
I think I understand the perspective, but the messaging sounds a bit like, "Pay us full price while serving as our beta tester; sacrifice the needs of your company so you can fulfill the needs of ours"
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aeyes 2543 days ago
Wait, you are saying that your current customers aren't valuable?

Thanks, I am now convinced that I'll never do business with GitLab.

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afandian 2543 days ago
We are paying money for the service. Yesterday we did not get good value for money.
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