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Exclusive: Google-backed software developer GitLab explores sale, sources say | Reuters
(www.reuters.com)
this post was submitted on 13 Aug 2024
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I don't think tech people understand how bad it is that Microsoft owns GitHub.
GitLab is one of the few places people could go if GitHub enshittifies too much. Google's stake in it (or full ownership of it) would probably be a good thing, because it would be seen as an important strategic hedge against Microsoft. If it's bought by a smaller player, I can see GitHub squeezing it into irrelevance.
I view Gitea as the real alternative to GitHub. I was very big on GitLab for a long time, and think any competition is good, but I'd really like it if more people could seriously invest in Gitea.
They're also working on ActivityPub support: https://github.com/go-gitea/gitea/issues/18240
Forgejo?
It's ironic that your alternative for GitHub is hosted on GitHub. That doesn't inspire a lot of confidence.
They host on Github for more visibility.
Yeah, I don't see how that's an issue at all. If Github kicks them, they'll just push to their own instance. They'd lose a few days to reconfigure the CI/CD or whatever, but that's about it.
I just wish GitHub wasn't part of MS anymore.
I also don't want Gitlab owned by another megacorp.
Something funded by the government but ran by a public org would be ideal.
Too bad. Microsoft is using it as part of their extremely long term plan to control the software that developers use to do their jobs. VSCode is another front in that battle. Things are going slowly, but they're winning.
They replaced Atom with VSCode, but some of the Atom devs are now working on Zed, which finally has Linux support. Or for a paid alternative, we have the Jetbrains suite, which can be excellent if that's your thing.
For Github, we still have Gitlab as an alternative, but once that goes, we have Gitea or Forgejo to move to.
The thing is that many developers are a vengeful bunch who hate big corps with their enshittification fetishes and love open source solutions. Microsoft has to tread really carefully here.
Ok... but just because someone's working on an alternative doesn't mean that alternative will be able to unseat VSCode. Microsoft is spending tens of millions per year to gently lock people into VSCode.
And they have been treading carefully for decades, and it's working. The people who supposedly hate big corps mostly use GitHub and VSCode. They're heating the water very, very slowly, and the frogs are staying in the pot.
"the government" which government?
I don't want software beholden to any state interests. I see donationware as the way to go; or if donations can't sustain server costs, donations for sustaining development, and then a public flagship instance which people can pay to use, or self-host for their own server costs.
Why the government? There are plenty of free git hosting services out there, take your pick. If gitlab goes away, move to gitea, forgejo, gitosis, etc.
I've been using raw Git for a while now. Glad I switched from GitHub for personal projects.
Can't share worth a shit that way, but 90% of my code is highly specific, personal scripts that I just want to maintain history and notes for. And a book I'm writing.
The moment I realized that "SSH login" on hosted git forges like GitHub literally just means "there's a folder on a computer that you're connecting to over SSH" was crazy to me. I realized that there's no need to selfhost gitlab, gitea, forgejo. Just put a folder on user@host in the repos folder, then set the origin url to user@host:~/repos/myrepo
I think there may be some init commands needed before, like git init --bare or something
Yeah, I use personal git repos for most things. But, it's not as convenient if you want to collaborate on something, or if you want to access features like building docker images and having them put into a repo. There's definitely a need for a place for open-source and free software projects to live. And, I personally don't want them on a platform owned by Microsoft.
GitLab is a parade of avoidable CVEs. There are better alternatives to worry for.