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I do understand that they need pay for their running cost, but to be completely honest, I don't think that they're running the business in a smart way. When GitHub took off, they were not offering private repository at all. Instead, they added it in slowly when they can afford to do so. This is one of the reason why GitHub has now become the #1 platform for open source projects around the world. GitLab is trying a different approach by focusing on offering repository hosting as service, but as time progresses and GitHub grows, this business model became less and less attractive. As a result of it, now days GitLab mainly attracts people who thinks GitHub isn't the right option for them, and that's not a big market. No matter how many cost they cut, if this remain unchanged, GitLab is already on it's dead bed (by that, I mean stop growing, not close for business). GitHub is smart because at very beginning (before allowing private repositories), they knew that if they want to attract good programmers and projects, they must also accept and respect garbage, because that's what it takes to build their trust. Deleting user data however, always destroy trust. If storing those repositories creates unbearable cost for GitLab, then maybe introduce a reasonable cap and then rejects new commits once the cap is exceeded (while asking user to buy more spaces). Making the entire repository just disappear is too much. I'm glad that they did not end up choosing that route, but at the same time, not choosing that route should be the default, not something you just realized after it went to the media. |