
GitLab raises 1.5M - jobvandervoort
https://about.gitlab.com/2015/07/09/1.5M-raised-in-seed-funding-for-gitlab-to-accelerate-growth-and-expand-operations/
======
general_failure
A feature I miss in GitLab and Github is an issue tracker across multiple
repos. For example, our project has 5-10 repos but they are all part of single
release/milestone.

Currently, we have to create milestones in each of the repos and assign issues
to those milestones. It's really a hassle. We cross reference commits a lot in
the issues and this is the reason why we don't create a "empty" repo simple
for common issues. Unless there is some way to say something like "Fixes
commonissuetracker#43".

Thanks, a very happy gitlab user

~~~
sytse
Glad to hear you're a very happy user!

We do the same thing as you, create the same milestone in each of the repo's
and then use the group milestone view to see an overview.

It would be nice to have a create milestone at the group level that creates
the milestone in all projects, would you be willing to contribute that?

Mentioning issues or merge requests in other projects can be done with the
cross project reference, found in the right hand side of every issue and merge
request, for example gitlab/organization#260

~~~
rcthompson
I think the real angle of this feature should be to abstract the concept of
"project" so that it is no longer synonymous with "git repository". And the
migration path is pretty straightforward: every repo becomes a project
containing a single repo, and then users can merge existing projects to create
multi-repo projects (at which point you'd probably have to re-number every
issue, pull request, etc. to avoid collisions).

~~~
sytse
We looked into this but it creates a lot of complexity. The group milestone
view solve the problem neatly.

~~~
rcthompson
That seems pretty reasonable, maybe even preferable. Having issues attached to
specific repos but synchronized to cross-repo common milestones sounds like it
would work well.

~~~
sytse
Thanks! To give you an idea of how it looks I've attached a screenshot of our
group milestone overview
[https://www.dropbox.com/s/ectdan1qc22vd3k/Screenshot%202015-...](https://www.dropbox.com/s/ectdan1qc22vd3k/Screenshot%202015-07-09%2022.34.05.png?dl=0)
and a specific milestone
[https://www.dropbox.com/s/rqb6rhaxafrmrtn/Screenshot%202015-...](https://www.dropbox.com/s/rqb6rhaxafrmrtn/Screenshot%202015-07-09%2022.35.56.png?dl=0)

------
jbrooksuk
Firstly, a major congratulations to the gang at GitLab - well deserved!

We'd used GitLab for over a year internally, but as I've mentioned previously,
it became a pain to maintain. So we switched to GitHub for our private
"important" projects and turned off our GitLab instance (other reasons caused
this too mind). Our version was 6.7 or something up until today.

Today we realised we should run GitLab internally again for non-critical
repositories - since our networking is a pain to give external access to
servers - we can't access it out of the office. I updated us to 7.12 CE and I
kind of regret it.

The UI is so complicated now. Whilst there are good features that we like,
it's so hard to navigate to where you want to be. I think this is down to the
"contextual" sidebar. I really do prefer GitHub's UI for repo administration
and usage, which is a shame.

Sure, the colours are nice in GitLab but it's far from functional. My
colleagues felt the same way too.

Also (for those at GitLab) your Markdown renderer is still not rendering
Markdown correctly in all cases...

Anyway, not to take away from the funding - it's excellent news!

~~~
tomphoolery
It's very, very difficult to do what GitHub did. They combined a great sense
of UX design with an extremely powerful and necessary backend product, and
they figured out a way to make money doing it. GitHub's large bank account and
horde of developers allows it to quickly take charge of high-stakes situations
and come out on top. (This, of course, is not implying that simply throwing
money at the problem will solve it...look at Atlassian Stash, a great product
but pales in comparison to GitHub) Open-source projects need money and time
too, but most of us don't get paid to work on open-source software, so GitLab
suffers from the fact that it's no one's job to create it.

Now that GitLab is getting some funding, it will at least level the playing
field somewhat.

~~~
mindsocket
I'm a product manager for Stash. I'd love to know more about what you find
lacking in Stash. We've got a bumper crop of improvements in the works that we
think are useful, but the more feedback to guide us, the better.

~~~
msmol
Stash, in my opinion, is the best git tool out there. Sadly it's sometimes
tough to convince people to switch when Github is 'good enough'. Anyway, keep
up the good work!

~~~
mindsocket
Thanks, very nice of you to say! We like that kind of feedback too :)

------
edwintorok
When I visit a project page I usually do it for one of these reason:

* learn about what the project is, a short description on what it is, how to install, where to find more documentation

* look at / search the files or clone the repo

* search bugreports or create a new bugreport

Your default project page looks quite similar to gitorious, which looks more
like a place to just host your repository and not a place to interact with the
project. Bitbucket's default looks way better for example, and github's is
quite good too.

My suggestion to make Gitlab fit better into my workflow:

* default page/tab for project root should be configurable, either on per project or per user basis: I'd like to have the README as default for example, the Activity page by default interests me less.

* there should be a tab for issues on the default page, its more important than to see the activity IMHO

* you've got the clone URL in an easily accessible place, good!

* the Files view is quite similar to Github's (good!), but I can't figure out how to search (either fulltext or filename)

* I don't see a button to create a new issue (I'm not logged in, should I login first? Github has a new issue button that takes you to login)

* how do I search in issues (fulltext?)

* how do I search for project names, or inside projects/issues globally?

* the default project page should somehow highlight or focus on making it easy and obvious the main aspects on how you'd interact with the project, if all features are shown in equal style it feels somewhat cluttered and overloaded.

P.S.: should I open a feature request about these on the gitlab site?

~~~
sytse
Thanks for your feedback, nice of you to submit this.

We've merged a completely new project homepage for 7.13 (out on the 22nd) that
addresses some of the things you mentioned. It will not be configurable
however.

Create issue is indeed only visible when logged in, makes sense to always show
it, feel free to submit to feedback.gitlab.com

Searching is fulltext but can be improved.

------
nodesocket
Seems like a small amount to raise from a heavyweight VC like Khosla and super
angel Ashton Kutcher. I would imagine trying to compete against GitHub and
GitHub enterprise would be a capital intensive thing.

~~~
sytse
Thanks for your remark. GitLab is a work of love for more than 800
contributors. That is why we've been able to bootstrap the company. Most of
the time we're around cash flow breakeven. We plan to hire expensive sales and
marketing people in SF so we need a bit of cash. But after 3-6 months they
help to generate more revenue. This allows us to raise relatively little
capital so we have more control of our destiny. We don't need to raise more
than our competitors to win because of our open source model.

------
Vespasian
Congratulations on the funding!

I am using a gitlab instance for about 2 years on my personal server and have
been very happy with it.

Recently, (finally!) we switched our research group over from (a very very old
version of) redmine and you can't imagine my joy when that happended! I think
never before in my life migrating wiki pages and issues felt so good.

Last but not least it is encouraging to see a European software startup
thriving and growing like you do. Nothing against the great products from SV
but a little geographical competition never hurt nobody. Right? ;)

Keep up the great work. Grüße aus Deutschland / Greetings from Germany

~~~
sytse
Thanks Vespasian, great to hear you're happy with GitLab.

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BinaryIdiot
I used GitLab at my last company. It was one of the earlier versions before
they went to YCombinator. At the time I wasn't a fan; I ran into bugs and just
had odd persistence issues.

But I've got to say GitLab is just incredible to use now. It's really nice and
I now use it over BitBucket for my private repositories. I still use GitHub
for OpenSource (that's going to be a hard barrier to get through if they
really want to) but I'm a big fan.

So congrats on the round! This is technically the second seed round, right? Or
does YCombinator not really count as a seed anymore?

~~~
gitdude
I am part of the Bitbucket team. Would love to hear what made you switch from
Bitbucket?

~~~
BinaryIdiot
So the price is one thing. Granted my personal projects are only just me but
some of the projects I've collaborated on before involved multiple people so
just for simplicity's sake I moved all of them over (I hate having multiple
services for the same type of thing; GitHub is the only exception because
their private pricing is really high and it's really difficult to do
OpenSource anywhere else).

I'm not going to lie and this is going to sound kinda shallow but I thought
GitLab looked nicer too. Granted this wasn't the main thing that made me move
but it did help nudge me a little.

Beyond that it's not like git is very different between places so it's kinda
hard to differentiate in my opinion.

------
wldcordeiro
I've been using Gitlab now for a few months and really like it but I've run
into some bugs on gitlab.com that I've reported through multiple avenues and
have had zero success fixing. The main one is that there are some repos that
if I make an issue or edit an issue on the server will 500 error on form
submit (the submit will still occur, the redirect is broken.) It would be
beyond nice to see this extra cash go to a more responsive support system.

~~~
sytse
Sorry for not following up soon enough, I see that [https://gitlab.com/gitlab-
com/support-forum/issues/202](https://gitlab.com/gitlab-com/support-
forum/issues/202) was open for a long time. I'll try to get you an answer
soon. We are indeed planning to hire more people for community support and are
looking for a junior service engineer
[https://about.gitlab.com/jobs/](https://about.gitlab.com/jobs/)

------
jobvandervoort
We're very excited with this opportunity. We'll be here if you have any
questions.

------
neom
Big fans of GitLab over here at DigitalOcean! Good work and good luck!

~~~
sytse
Good to hear that! Thanks for your early GitLab template, it greatly helped
us.

------
jtwaleson
Congrats from another Dutch company that expanded to the US! We're using
GitLab for all our internal source code at Mendix, and are extremely happy
with it.

~~~
sytse
Great to hear that! Your success is a great inspiration to all Dutch startups.

------
physcab
This is a naive question, but what's the difference between GitLab and Github?

~~~
kenrikm
Gitlab runs on your server. They are very similar, though there are still
plenty of features Github has that Gitlab does not.

~~~
jobvandervoort
I think we're actually running ahead in some ways. What are things that GH has
that you miss in GitLab?

See also: [https://about.gitlab.com/better-than-
github/](https://about.gitlab.com/better-than-github/)

~~~
wldcordeiro
A nice notification panel like the one in github would be excellent. I really
like Gitlab and have been using it for my projects but the lack of a
notifications panel is annoying.

~~~
sytse
Good point, we're thinking about this. Personally I would really like to see a
list of items I've been mentioned in but where I have not responded in the
issue or merge request. Is that also what you want or do you want to see all
mentions regardless of having responded yourself.

------
mullingitover
I'm a big fan of GitLab's ability to create custom hooks and protected
branches. GitHub doesn't offer those things, and despite their more polished
UI it was a dealbreaker.

------
marvel_boy
Nice ! Without doubt GitLab has created a lot of innovation. What are the main
new things you will be deliver in the future?

~~~
jobvandervoort
I'm quite excited about the future of GitLab CI. We're working hard on it and
with each release it's becoming easier to use and more powerful.

GitLab is going very fast both in terms of customization/integration and in
usability. We've always valued a solid product that doesn't hurt itself by
adding too many new features or configurables, but lately we've been spending
more and more time thinking about the feel and look of GitLab.

Concretely it depends on what our customers and community request and
contribute. Also have a look at our CHANGELOG for the upcoming release:
[https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-
ce/blob/master/CHANGELO...](https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-
ce/blob/master/CHANGELOG#L3)

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the-dude
But what is the valuation?

~~~
digitalboss
It's a seed investment, they really don't need to offer a valuation at this
time, especially to the public.

~~~
sytse
The seed investments have a cap, which is close to a valuation. But it is
indeed common not to disclose it.

------
schandur
Congratulations to the GitLab team! We use a self-hosted version and are very
happy with it.

~~~
sytse
Thanks, glad to hear that!

------
ausjke
For some reason I feel Redmine + Gitolite is the best for everything, except
for code-review that is.

~~~
jobvandervoort
What do you miss in GitLab that RM and Gitolite offer?

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marcelo_lebre
Nicely done!

~~~
sytse
Thanks Marcelo!

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yAnonymous
Congrats and thanks for the great software!

~~~
sytse
Thanks and you're welcome!

------
joshmn
Paging @sytse; "GitLab CEO here" coming soon... :)

For those who don't get the joke,
[https://www.google.com/search?num=40&es_sm=119&q="GitLab+CEO...](https://www.google.com/search?num=40&es_sm=119&q="GitLab+CEO+here"+site%3Anews.ycombinator.com)

~~~
jobvandervoort
GitLab PM here, see also
[https://twitter.com/gitlabceohere](https://twitter.com/gitlabceohere) (not
started by us, but we have a suspicion who did)

------
fibo
I don't like the idea of a free as in beer software. GitHub is Great but
Gitlab seems like a cheap clone, so targeting People that want to pay less or
nothing. I don't think it is ethic to clone ideas, to build a better world we
nerd new ideas.

~~~
ikawe
I think building up a libre platform, even if the basic patterns have been
established, paves the way for innovation. Imagine if people could just "add
features" to Github.

To put it another way, GNU and Linux were just a "cheap clone" of UNIX, but
became a great platform for innovation.

~~~
mikekchar
One interesting thing about GNU is that originally developers were encouraged
to implement work a-like solutions, but with completely different internals.
This resulted in a large number of improvements over the standard Unix tools
(a great example being bison vs yacc). I'll probably get some push back from
the BSD folks, but back in the old days it was pretty common to install GNU
(without the kernel) on every new Unix box you got because the GNU utilities
were considered to be better (possibly some of them have gotten a bit
bloated... bash... ;-) ).

