
Thanks Gitlab - eitland
https://cmpwn.com/@sir/103018233505800721
======
Sir_Cmpwn
My Mastodon is being hugged to death, so here's the content:

@sir@cmpwn.com

Thanks Gitlab

image: [https://sr.ht/qAVP.png](https://sr.ht/qAVP.png)

@sir@cmpwn.com

If my competitors keep making stupid decisions then making SourceHut
successful will be pretty easy

@sir@cmpwn.com

Hi HN, the missing context is that this is signups for sourcehut.org, a GitLab
competitor, in the wake of news that they'd be adding third-party telemetry to
their software.

\---

Note, I mostly use my Mastodon account for shitposting, this isn't a serious
marketing avenue or anything. This is my personal Mastodon instance, its
infrastructure not holding up under load has no impact on SourceHut
availability.

------
rvz
> If my competitors keep making stupid decisions then making SourceHut
> successful will be pretty easy

I know it is early days for SourceHut but this sounds realistic on some
conditions. Due to the closed-source nature of Github + MS and this
magnificent own goal from GitLab which disqualifies its claim to supporting
"free and open source" projects, it should be only "easy" for SourceHut to be
sustainable and supporting free software ethics as long as it resists VC
funding and is self-funded with paid support.

Without more convincing features and a matching similar interface rivaling
GitHub/GitLab/Bitbucket it may go otherwise, but it already has some of
essential features already and I hope this true free-software alternative
succeeds.

This is as close as it gets to creating a service that truly supports free-
software with paid support.

~~~
packetlost
It will probably never have anywhere near feature parity with GitLab or GitHub
in the browser. Part of it's goals are to remain simple and minimize
JavaScript usage. Which is noble in it's own right IMO. But it's straight up
impossible to do a lot of what Git{Hub,Lab} do without JS.

~~~
clarry
> But it's straight up impossible to do a lot of what Git{Hub,Lab} do without
> JS.

Like infinite incremental loading that randomly stops working and also breaks
browser's built-in search functionality because the thing you want to find is
not loaded yet until you scroll down? Yeah, I'm glad they can't do that BS.

Making a good service isn't only about what you can technically do. I'd say
it's much more about what you choose to do with whatever tech you have at
hand. My experience with GitLag is that it's slow and the UI is generally
clumsy (I have to use Google so often to find my way around), and you run into
antifeatures like infinite scrolling and this:
[https://i.imgur.com/Qmtec2b.png](https://i.imgur.com/Qmtec2b.png)

Sadly I think all these sites (SourceHut, Github, Gitlab..) have things to
learn from cvsweb. That is, if one could ever convince them to prioritize
convenience over prettiness. That is, probably never.

~~~
Sir_Cmpwn
Regarding that screenshot of GitLab:

[https://git.sr.ht/~sircmpwn/linux/tree/master/arch/arm/boot/...](https://git.sr.ht/~sircmpwn/linux/tree/master/arch/arm/boot/dts)

~~~
clarry
Thank you for posting that. Actually I checked it out and contemplated
including that very link in my original post, but I wasn't sure if your
service was facing the same hug of death that presumably hit your Mastodon. :)

~~~
Sir_Cmpwn
SourceHut is on different infrastructure than my personal Mastodon instance,
it can take a lot more heat :)

------
the_duke
I'm curios why the post about Gitlab [1] was marked as a duplicate and thereby
banished from the front page, without any other post in sight.

YCombinator favoritism? ( Gitlab was part of YCombinator 2015 )

[1]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21343761](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21343761)

Edit: Number 22 yesterday.
[https://news.ycombinator.com/front?day=2019-10-23](https://news.ycombinator.com/front?day=2019-10-23)

Must have missed it. Seems fine to me.

~~~
dang
It was marked as a duplicate because it was a duplicate of
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21344575](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21344575),
which spent over 14 hours on HN's front page and got over 200 upvotes.

Now there are three threads; those two and this one, which is currently on the
front page. I'm happy to merge them, but am not sure which submission should
win.

Edit:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21343761](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21343761)
has the most substantive discussion of the fresh threads, so I guess we'll
undupe that one and merge. Give me a few minutes because it's a bit tricky
when there are more than two.

Edit 2: Ok, I've merged all the comments into the thread except for the ones
which were explicitly about this post in a way that wouldn't make sense over
there.

~~~
windsurfer
I ignored the original post due to the boring title, and only read the second
post due to the more interesting title. I don't really have a point other than
the duplicate was what I was following, while the original was not.

~~~
thsowers
+1 Same here. There were also some interesting comments and discussion going
on in that thread. Understand why it was marked as a duplicate, don't
understand why the threads weren't combined

edit: Thank you @dang!

------
sysashi
Drew is always on spot with his marketing. :)

I think it would be good to link related blog post -
[https://sourcehut.org/blog/2019-10-23-srht-puts-users-
first/](https://sourcehut.org/blog/2019-10-23-srht-puts-users-first/) (maybe
that would give some context)

------
maximente
great stuff, an idiotic play by a bigger fish likely provides the biggest
marketing opportunity for sourcehut it has ever had up until this point, and
this guy is taking advantage of it.

there's also something grand about the fact that this was posted on mastodon
(instead of twitter) to complete the FLOSS cosmic justice cycle

------
vkaku
OK, Context for people:

Apparently GitLab said it was going to telemetry, so a competitor, SourceHut
saw a surge in signups.

To me, it's a sign that if someone is adding telemetry for on-premise
software, it better be opt-in.

~~~
aetimmes
They weren't adding telemetry to their on-prem software, though.

~~~
gbear605
They weren’t, but they also were leaving themselves the ability to without
informing their customers.

------
matthuggins
What am I looking at?

~~~
omarhaneef
The number of daily sign ups for sourcehut.

This is billed as a competitor to GitLab.

GitLab announced something about allowing some sort of telemetry on its site
-- I didn't look into the details but its all over HN -- and people have
complained that this might imply privacy violations.

So this alternative to GitLab got a bump in signups.

~~~
scrollaway
I got Gitlab's email and immediately knew people would be freaking out about
it.

The fallacy of transparency: The more transparent you are, the more people
think you're up to some shady shit. It's crazy.

~~~
whatshisface
Do you think that if they had just put the tracker in nobody would have
noticed? I think it would go silent for a month, and then become the subject
of a top-of-HN blog post about how some enterprise security guy discovered it.
Gitlab would write a blog post about how sorry they were, nobody would believe
them, and there would be no way to un-do the breach of trust. By allowing
everyone on HN to tell at them not to implement the change _before_ doing it,
they have made themselves able to avoid the catastrophe by cancelling the
plan. Although the best thing Gitlab could have done for their public image as
a trustworthy service provider would be to never have even let on that they
would consider such a thing, this is the next best option, because whoever
wanted to do this now has lost some internal political credibility.

~~~
scrollaway
I'm sure people would have noticed. Hell, some may have noticed immediately.
But it would have been a non-story unless everyone got an email and _had_ to
google around for what's going on and figure out whether they need to be
outraged.

------
ivl
And it's being hugged down after getting to the top.

Unfortunate, I'm sure SourceHut is seeing a nice bump, and it seems like quite
a well built product.

------
znpy
Uh, I just signed up today. After gitlab stupid decision sourcehut looks a lot
more interesting and not I want to see it in action.

------
oneepic
This is kind of a shitty, disrespectful thing to post. Really it's just
insulting a competitor. I'm not a fan of GitLab's decision either, but this
shouldn't be frontpage HN.

~~~
sytse
We called out the increasing signups at GitLab when GitHub got acquired, so
from our side it is more than fair that Drew is posting this.

BTW As Drew said [https://gitlab.com/gitlab-com/www-gitlab-
com/merge_requests/...](https://gitlab.com/gitlab-com/www-gitlab-
com/merge_requests/33289#note_235146489) we're pumping the brakes on the
telemetry changes.

~~~
RussianCow
I think OP was referring to this specifically:

> If my competitors keep making stupid decisions then making SourceHut
> successful will be pretty easy

He could have posted the same thing with the same effect without being
outright rude.

~~~
sytse
Ah, thanks. I only looked at the first post
[https://cmpwn.com/@sir/103018233505800721](https://cmpwn.com/@sir/103018233505800721)
not the rest of the thread.

------
knolax
Can somebody give me some context? OP is just a Mastodon post showing signup
numbers (for Sourcehut?).

~~~
eitland
I posted it for three reasons:

\- directly related to another huge topic

\- maybe more people will notice there are alternatives to Twitter

\- to send more business in the way of sourcehut (completely unaffiliated,
just felt like a nice thing to do)

------
luord
This reminded me that I've been putting off trying sourcehut. Gotta get on
that.

------
buboard
Passive aggressive title, frivolous outrage of the day, Top frontpage seat
confirmed.

~~~
dang
" _Please don 't complain that a submission is inappropriate. If a story is
spam or off-topic, flag it._"

[https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html](https://news.ycombinator.com/newsguidelines.html)

------
sergiotapia
what is the context?

~~~
jordigh
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21346456](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=21346456)

------
chefschef
What's the context here, exactly?

------
new_realist
100 signups a day? sourcehut is already dead, they just don’t know it yet.

------
EugeneOZ
Guys, your mobile view really need some care.

