
Ask HN: GitHub vs. Gitlab? - ghettosoak
After much deliberation of pulling the trigger on the 7 $&#x2F;mo private Github account, I&#x27;m leaning heavily towards Gitlab.<p>EDIT: I&#x27;m setting up a private repo for an upcoming project, and I&#x27;d like to run the issue tracking through some git service, potentially scaling to include a Kanban Board. Not sure if it&#x27;s gonna be just me or other devs. This looks promising:<p>http:&#x2F;&#x2F;kanban.leanlabs.io&#x2F;<p>I&#x27;ve set myself the challenge of being as financially prudent as humanly possible, especially with this project, as it is an extremely low budget.<p>If Gitlab can offer free private accounts, with a couple cool features thrown in on the side, why shouldn&#x27;t I use it?<p>Which do you use? Why not the other?<p>PS – I&#x27;m not from Gitlab, I&#x27;m just some hacker trying to lock up his stack. :)
======
connorshea
Disclosure: GitLab Frontend Engineering Intern

Some benefits for GitLab.com, in my opinion: GitLab.com has free public and
private repos, only limit is the repo size (max 10GB, for comparison the Linux
repo is ~1.5GB). Also includes completely free CI :) Plus everything is out in
the open, and CE is entirely open source!

Regarding performance, we've gotten that feedback from _a lot_ of users, and
we're working very hard on improving it[1][2][3]. I've personally been working
a lot on decreasing the page size, chopping off a ton of extra unnecessary
assets to make things download and parse faster.

Would be happy to answer any other questions you have! Hopefully this doesn't
sound like too much of a sales pitch ^_^

[1]: [https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-
ce/issues/19273#note_12...](https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-
ce/issues/19273#note_12954570)

[2]: [https://gitlab.com/gitlab-
com/operations/issues/42](https://gitlab.com/gitlab-com/operations/issues/42)

[3]: [https://gitlab.com/gitlab-
com/infrastructure/issues/59](https://gitlab.com/gitlab-
com/infrastructure/issues/59)

~~~
zacmps
Just a note, Github now has free private repos as well.

~~~
pritambaral
Just checked the [http://github.com/pricing](http://github.com/pricing) page
in disbelief. No, Github doesn't have free private repos. One has to either be
a student (and use Github private repos only for education purposes) or pay a
minimum of $7/mo to have even a single private repo. When paying $7/mo., of
course, one could have as many private repos as one wants, but $7/mo. isn't
free.

------
haukur
I prefer GitHub myself. I tried using GitLab for my private projects, but
their service is usually _very_ slow. Taking 15 seconds to load a page is just
not acceptable, in my opinion (this is not an exaggeration - their average
page load times seem to be at a minimum of 5 seconds). If you don't want to
pay, though, it's one of the better options. Their integrated (also free) CI
service is nice. However, the UI/UX is not very good. It can be difficult to
navigate source code and between issues in their issues system.

$7 for a GitHub account with unlimited private projects is a pretty good deal,
especially compared to their previous pricing tiers. I also think the
experience of using one website for most open source projects as well as
private projects is better.

~~~
sytse
Thanks for your comment. We know we have to do better on performance, see my
earlier answer in
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12056276](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12056276)

How can we make issue navigation better? By the way, what do you think of the
recent menu redesign? [https://about.gitlab.com/2016/06/06/navigation-
redesign/](https://about.gitlab.com/2016/06/06/navigation-redesign/)

------
sytse
Thanks for considering GitLab. The different scrum boards for GitLab are
detailed on [https://about.gitlab.com/applications/#scrum-
boards](https://about.gitlab.com/applications/#scrum-boards) For GitLab 8.11
(August 22) we're planning to ship a kanban board with GitLab itself, see
[https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-
ce/issues/17907](https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-ce/issues/17907)

What we hear most frequently a reason for switching is the in the integrated
CI, CD, and container registry. The GitHub importer will import your repo,
issues, PRs, milestones, labels, and wikis
[http://docs.gitlab.com/ce/workflow/importing/import_projects...](http://docs.gitlab.com/ce/workflow/importing/import_projects_from_github.html)

~~~
rchhabs
Bitbucket supports kanban boards today. Checkout our integrations page [0].
Two of our partners Comalatech [1] and Transition Technologies SA [2] both
built simple solutions that display your Bitbucket issues in a kanban board.

Full disclosure: I'm Head of Product for Bitbucket. LMK if you want to chat, a
link to my calendar is in my HN profile.

[0]:
[https://bitbucket.org/integrations/cloud](https://bitbucket.org/integrations/cloud)
[1]:
[https://marketplace.atlassian.com/plugins/com.comalatech.bit...](https://marketplace.atlassian.com/plugins/com.comalatech.bitbucket.canvas/cloud/overview)
[2]:
[https://marketplace.atlassian.com/plugins/bucketboard/cloud/...](https://marketplace.atlassian.com/plugins/bucketboard/cloud/overview)

------
dglass
Gitlab's servers have been slow in my experience. Sometimes taking 10-15
seconds to push up a new commit. I got tired of waiting and moved everything
back to bitbucket.

Both gitlab and bitbuckets source code browsing is slow and a little clunky.
GitHub's source code browsing is definitely the best.

~~~
gcb0
github cheats for performance.

our github enterprise will not bother try show diffs on some pull requests if
you changed more than a hundred lines or so. very worthless.

my workflow now is to always check the diffs locally because i don't trust
theirs.

never used gitlab or bitbucket a lot so i don't know if this treachery is
there too.

~~~
kannonboy
Bitbucket engineer here!

In Bitbucket Cloud - i.e. bitbucket.org - we cap the diff size for pull
requests at 10000 lines.

In Bitbucket Server we also cap the number of lines in a particular diff at
10000 by default, but you can override this number[0], along with all other
timeouts and thresholds with our various configuration properties. One of the
engineering values of the Server team is "no hardcoded constants" \- so you
can configure basically any property that you like to suit your particular
deployment.

Both Bitbucket Server and Cloud also generate a subtly different - and in our
opinion more correct - diff than you'll find in GitLab and GitHub. Bitbucket
actually creates a hypothetical merge commit between your two branches and
shows the diff between it and the tip of the target branch. This means we can
nicely render merge conflicts in the UI, and show how your target branch will
actually be affected by the merge (rather than just the changes on the source
branch). I wrote an article that discusses our merge algorithm in more
depth[1] a little while ago.

[0]:
[https://confluence.atlassian.com/bitbucketserver/bitbucket-s...](https://confluence.atlassian.com/bitbucketserver/bitbucket-
server-config-properties-776640155.html#BitbucketServerconfigproperties-
Paging) [1]: [https://developer.atlassian.com/blog/2015/01/a-better-
pull-r...](https://developer.atlassian.com/blog/2015/01/a-better-pull-
request/)

edit: correcting my previous statement on diff sizing in Bitbucket Cloud

------
ghettosoak
Holy shit, I’m internet famous! Hi Mom! :D

Coming up for air after a deep dive with Keystone.js – as you all have
invested your time, I owe you an answer:

I’ve decided to go with GitLab going forward. It’s free, has integrated well
with my team, runs itself in the cloud with the option of being run locally,
and has some super promising stuff in the pipes. I’m excited to see what else
it can do!

Before I get to the runners-up: massive thanks to everyone who participated
here. This is a super cool community that I’m lucky to be able to tap into;
and watching various well-thought arguments and rockstars give their two cents
has been a real treat.

Bitbucket is the service that, unfortunately, I always seem to hear all of
about 15 minutes too late. I see Bitbucket about on par with Github between
what they offer – the biggest thing that it has going against it, then, is its
lack of proliferation. Perhaps it’s that Github locked up their UI earlier,
perhaps it’s just what I’ve been grandfathered into. But all too often, it
proves to be the path of least resistance for a significant enough of the dev
population – and that’s a good sign they’re doing something right.

Having said that, I would love to see this balance shift. :D Please, prove me
wrong!

Rhodecode is definitely something to keep your eye on. Squabbles aside, it
looks like they have a lot of really dedicated people working on something
that looks extremely promising. Please keep fighting the good fight!

Again, endless thanks to everyone who jumped in here. I’m on skype
@mike.of.the.jungle, if you’d like to say hi.

~~~
fatihacet
Disclosure: GitLab Frontend Engineer

I am very glad to hear that you decided to go with GitLab. We are trying hard
to make it better and open for you. Thank you for your support.

------
xemoka
I quite like GitLab, although I'm using it self hosted on premises for our
team. Honestly, it's overkill and I wish Gogs had been more evolved when I
initially picked up GitLab.

I have not really tried GitLab's hosted offering, I have a couple repos up
there, but nothing extensive.

Have you considered a VPS with Gogs? It's super lightweight and easier than
snot to setup.

~~~
marcinkuzminski
Have you checked our RhodeCode ? It's much more mature that Gogs.

~~~
atomi
I really like the mirror feature on Gogs, the Gogs ui, the easy deployment
using Docker and that it uses Go so the memory and cpu usage is quite low.

~~~
marcinkuzminski
RhodeCode has the same feature called remote repos. You can create a repo from
remote one and that pull changes via a button, or api call. You can even use
credentials inside the url which are then encrypted inside the database

~~~
atomi
The Gogs mirror updates automatically. I only use it to mirror public Github
repos so I have them in case myself, Github or the project goes offline.

------
choward
I'd just gitlab because it's open source. You could run your own gitlab
servers if you wanted. You don't have to worry about vendor lock in unless you
use the paid features.

~~~
kannonboy
One of the nice things about Git is that it's an extremely portable data
format, so vendor lock-in between Bitbucket, GitLab & GitHub isn't too big a
deal. There may be a little project metadata that needs to be migrated using
an importer, but your source code will always be inherently transferable. It's
one of the big reasons Atlassian decided to partner with GitHub on Git LFS[0]
rather than pursue our own solution: we didn't want to reduce Git's
portability by creating multiple competing standards for large file storage.

[0]: [https://blog.bitbucket.org/2015/10/01/contributing-to-git-
lf...](https://blog.bitbucket.org/2015/10/01/contributing-to-git-lfs/)

------
innix
I'm using Gitlab right now, and honestly I wish I'd chosen GitHub instead.
Self-hosted Gitlab requires maintenance (Sidekiq randomly dies, needs manual
restart), upgrading is a pain, and (for me) when I tried exporting my projects
from self-hosted Gitlab to Gitlab.com tbe import failed with a "unable to
decompress" error on Gitlab.com! I'm too tied to Gitlab now with all the wiki
pages, issues, etc. but I'm left disappointed with these problems I've had.

~~~
sytse
Are you using this Omnibus packages? See
[https://about.gitlab.com/downloads/](https://about.gitlab.com/downloads/)

That should solve the Sidekiq restarts and the upgrades
[https://twitter.com/johann_sonntag/status/745791831225544704](https://twitter.com/johann_sonntag/status/745791831225544704)

------
magic_beans
Why not Bitbucket, which is free and private?

~~~
mightykan
Atlassian has become much less of a caring company since they’ve gone public
(or are preparing to). They’ve completely ruined SourceTree on Mac (an
unnecessary interface redesign that took functionality away which still hasn’t
been fixed almost 9 months later) and have been very careless in HipChat iOS
client’s updates (shipping crippling bugs and not fixing them). They also used
to be very friendly to feedback on Twitter but now are completely silent and
don’t help or comment at all. Atlassian might’ve been a good company at some
point but they aren’t any more. I’d rather use a fully open source solution
that is mostly developed in the open (GitLab) than to be locked into a
proprietary package (GitHub) or a downright user-hostile option (Bitbucket).

~~~
farkas
Would love to understand more about this. I doubt it has anything to do with
us going public. I can understand some of your other points (though I'd love
to spend the time to explain our perspective if you would like), but "user-
hostile" in bitbucket I don't understand.

Happy to engage further if you email me. scott <at> atlassian.com.

Scott Farquhar, Atlassian CEO

------
mattdennewitz
For me, Gitlab's slowness (both in pushing and in browsing) is offset by a
great feature set and very solid pricing. The issue with speed has never stood
in the way of productivity. I made the switch for personal projects because I
didn't care for the extra private repos tax GH levied.

------
sashk
Three years ago my answer would be GitHub. But since then I've been forced to
use (and manage) Gitlab. Within that time, I fell in love with Gitlab and it
simplifies many of our tasks. We are using self-hosted instance and worth
every penny we spent on it's license. (Gitlab CE was enough, but we were
looking for few features available in the EE).

So now my answer is self-hosted Gitlab.

~~~
sytse
Thanks sashk for being a GitLab user for 3 years. That is a long time and I
hope you found that GitLab got a little better every month. Thanks for posting
here, I really appreciate it.

------
RomanPushkin
GitHub. It's like McDonalds, may be you don't like it, but you always know
what to expect. Moreover, you'll find lots of tools that already integrated
with GitHub (for example, [https://waffle.io](https://waffle.io)).

~~~
philtar
Except for private repos it's the most expensive choice.

------
bbrunner
I really enjoy GitLab. Very easy to setup and does what it promises. I will
say that it's slower than I would expect but I haven't found that to be a deal
breaker for me personally. Probably depends on your workflow and how much you
do locally vs. in the UI.

~~~
sytse
Thanks Brian. I assume you're using GitLab.com. We're working hard to improve
the performance, see my earlier answer in
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12056276](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12056276)

------
icebraining
We self-host Gitlab CE and it's fine, especially with the latest updates; I
don't miss GH at all.

If you feel that Gitlab.com is slow, give self-hosting a try; the omnibus
packages are quite easy to install/upgrade and it's quite fast even with many
dozens of repositories on a 2GB DO instance.

~~~
sytse
Glad to hear that your self hosted GitLab is fast. It should be! And the
changes we're making to make GitLab.com faster should also benefit the self
hosted installations.

------
lackbeard
I haven't used GitHub a ton, but GitLab is really crappy in my experience. I'm
constantly frustrated by the UX. CVSweb and Trac do a better job, and did so
10 & 15 years ago. I've also used BitBucket quite a bit; it's not great, but
it's a ton better than GitLab.

~~~
dmitry-k
@lackbeard [https://try.rhodecode.com](https://try.rhodecode.com) RhodeCode
has a modern UI, with automated PR's, and configurable integrations(CI/issue
trackers) across Git/Mercurial/SVN.

Since RhodeCode is open source, it can be tailored to one's own needs.

------
abfan1127
I've been using Bitbucket for private repos. Its interface is not as intuitive
as Github, but its good enough for me.

------
alcoholiday
Switched to gitlab @ work from github (the enterprise edition) and it's been
much nicer. Really appreciated the integrated CI/CD support, and we're just
about to start using the built in container repo.

~~~
sytse
Glad to hear that! We're very excited about our upcoming CI/CD features. We
just released environments and next month we'll have deploys that require
manual confirmation [https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-
ce/issues/17010](https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-ce/issues/17010)

------
hosh
Github's UX is very polished. Having tried Bitbucket, it's not at parity when
it comes to UX.

I have not tried Gitlab so I won't comment on that. I will say, however,
Github has put a lot of work into the pull request interface and being able to
examine code. This matters a lot more when you are working with a team (though
it assumes you know how to take full advantage of it). I'd look at Gitlab
through that lens, and if you are working solo, the cheaper solution is
probably OK.

------
jweslley
I using a self-hosted GitLab since 2012. It's easy to setup and maintain. Also
there are many awesome features! It works fine for my small team.

------
jttam
I am contemplating a move from Github to Gitlab right now. Feature-wise there
seems to be enough parity with Github to make this sort of thing possible.

Also, gitlab's CI system is attractive and being able to run our own runners
in our own environment (we currently used an outsourced CI system.)

We're also doing it because Github enterprise is too expensive, and we want to
rely on less external dependencies in our environment.

~~~
sytse
Glad to hear you're considering to move to GitLab. We think being able to have
CI Runners on your own environment too is a great advantage, not only on Linux
machines but any. For GitLab.com we're using autoscaling runners
[https://about.gitlab.com/2016/03/29/gitlab-
runner-1-1-releas...](https://about.gitlab.com/2016/03/29/gitlab-
runner-1-1-released/) at Digital Ocean and we're running 2800 now, see
[http://i.imgur.com/8bP8QBh.png](http://i.imgur.com/8bP8QBh.png) for a
screenshot I just took that combines our Digital Ocean runners with people
that bring their own.

------
mcs_
We started with a HUB. Small account 5 projects. We then switched to a self
hosted Lab. A small VM running CE.

With no effort we are managing dozen of projects and now we are in love with
CI (and OpenShift)

We want to start using HUB again as mirror (still need to understand how...)
but no plan to leave GitLab.

Here the feedback

. Easy to use . Easy (apt-get) to update . Nice to manage . Yours . Same flow
as git hub if you use it as git repository...

------
dmitry-k
@ghettosoak, Dmitry from RhodeCode team is here! Have you considered
[https://rhodecode.com](https://rhodecode.com) ?

RhodeCode CE is free, self-hosted & open-source, with code review tools, user
management, and automations. It takes ~5mins to get your own instance up and
running. Most of RhodeCode users have secure, behind-the-firewall
repositories, where conventional tools are not enough. Seems like a good fit
for your case.

I realize you are using Git, however if you collaborate with an external
partner or customer, RhodeCode supports Git, Mercurial & SVN repos
_simultaneously_ . See, should you decide to migrate from one VCS to another,
we got you covered :)

Besides, we have a great engineering culture, hence performance has never been
a problem (e.g., we use Elasticsearch for full-text code search). Ask our
users on #Slack: [https://rhodecode.com/join](https://rhodecode.com/join)

~~~
carussell
> The primary author of RhodeCode formed a company, RhodeCode GmbH [...] The
> company announced a license change and added a 20-user maximum into the
> Python code for RhodeCode. That led to complaints, threats, and ultimately a
> patch to remove the 20-user restriction. The company then threatened the
> author of that patch. [...]

> The company claimed to have 100% of the copyright in RhodeCode, even though
> patches had been accepted from others

[https://lwn.net/Articles/609709/](https://lwn.net/Articles/609709/)

~~~
dmitry-k
That's not true. Some parts (e.g. CSS and images) never were open source.

You can read more about why RhodeCode went back to open source (AGPL) here:
[https://rhodecode.com/blog/113/rhodecode-goes-open-
source](https://rhodecode.com/blog/113/rhodecode-goes-open-source)

~~~
carussell
> That's not true.

You're going to need to be more specific than that.

------
mtmail
Why do you lean heavily towards Gitlab? It's easier to make a recommendation
if we know what your priorities are. Are you using it for you job? How many
public repositories do you have, how many private?

Check out
[https://bitbucket.org/product/pricing](https://bitbucket.org/product/pricing)
as well.

------
felixangell1024
I much prefer GitHub or even BitBucket over GitLab. GitLab was insanely slow.
A lot of the features GitLab offers still didn't persuade us over something
that was minimal, worked well, and was fast. I'm also not a fan of the UI/UX,
it's kind of confusing what certain icons mean as opposed to a simple fixed
with layout like GitHub.

~~~
connorshea
We put a lot of thought in our most recent release to improve the UI/UX, so
some of your problems with that may have been resolved since you last used
GitLab.

As for performance, we've started treating speed as a priority, and we've been
tracking progress in various issues:

[https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-
ce/issues/19273#note_12...](https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-
ce/issues/19273#note_12954570)

[https://gitlab.com/gitlab-
com/operations/issues/42](https://gitlab.com/gitlab-com/operations/issues/42)

[https://gitlab.com/gitlab-
com/infrastructure/issues/59](https://gitlab.com/gitlab-
com/infrastructure/issues/59)

We'll keep improving over the next few months, lots of work still to do.

~~~
felixangell1024
Yes! I've been seeing a lot of great improvements being added to GitLab
recently. I'm intrigued to see what the future holds, and could definitely see
myself switching in the near future.

With regard to UI/UX improvements, I'll have to check it out and see how much
it's changed since last time :-)

~~~
connorshea
If you have specific issues with the UI/UX or find any bugs, feel free to open
an issue and mention me (@connorshea) :)

Personally the performance issues have been super annoying for me when using
GitLab.com, so I've been doing what I can removing unnecessary assets and
things, making the page size smaller.

One huge improvement recently was speeding up the Files view, I used to
actually avoid it because it was way too slow, really bad experience.

We all use GitLab.com every day to develop GitLab, so we're very much aware of
the problems!

------
dsmithatx
For me it's very simple as I only use them for Git repos. We use Jira and
other tools for other needs.

Github - I use it for public projects because, it's the most popular site so
larger pool of people.

Gitlab - It's free to put your private repos here so, this is where I store
all my infrastructure code.

------
zeroxfe
I've used both, and got quite annoyed with the poor reliability and latency of
Gitlab. I just want something that functions, is predictable, and gets out of
my way.

GitHub meets my needs, and I'm a happy $7/mo. customer. :-)

------
joeseeder
I moved most of new private repos to gitlab.com from bitbucket. It's nice to
experience interface parity between self hosted and public gitlab. And more
and more of my clients move to self hosted gitlab as well.

~~~
sytse
Great to hear that. We take great pride in running an unmodified version of
GitLab Enterprise Edition on GitLab.com Our settings are detailed on
[https://about.gitlab.com/gitlab-
com/settings/](https://about.gitlab.com/gitlab-com/settings/)

------
romanovcode
Gitlab:

\- Open Source

\- Frequent updates, new features

\- CI built in

\- No drama

\- Free

Github:

\- Faster than Gitlab

I'm pretty sure Gitlab wins big time, I switched and never looked back.

------
ottobretz
[http://www.phacility.com](http://www.phacility.com) also known as phabricator
is really nice. you should give it a try.

~~~
xuejie
Totally agree, to me Github and Gitlab are so similar that there really is no
point in arguing which one to use, just pick either one and you should be
okay.

On the other hand, Phabricator is a solution that contains a much more variety
of features, which might be suitable to certain teams.

------
jswny
I still use GitHub but the best thing about GitLab for me was the integrated
CI (which is amazing), and the fact that you can host GitLab on your own
servers.

------
MichaelBurge
I use Bitbucket for private projects. It comes with a little issue tracker,
although I just use a Google doc for task tracking.

~~~
mattferderer
Have you tried out Atlassian's JIRA software? It's free for up to 5 users I
think.

~~~
MichaelBurge
My last corporate job used JIRA. I'm convinced that smaller teams will be much
more productive with a looser issue/task tracking mechanism, like a Google doc
or Trello board.

One of the smaller teams used this, and it seemed to be more helpful than
harmful:

[https://kanbanflow.com/](https://kanbanflow.com/)

~~~
KayL
Loved Google Doc also. I used to use Trello until I figured out anyone in team
able to delete the card items, therefore I couldn't track back the history.

------
juped
Bitbucket is the best _git host_ out there right now. They want to sell you
their full-sized issue tracker, though.

------
the_trapper
Visual Studio Team Services is pretty nice as well. It's also free for
individuals and small teams.

[https://www.visualstudio.com/products/visual-studio-team-
ser...](https://www.visualstudio.com/products/visual-studio-team-services-vs)

------
SamReidHughes
I tried signing up for Gitlab some months ago, and automated emails to my
fastmail-hosted email address didn't get delivered. My blocking concern is
that email delivery problems, if they persist, will hurt the site's
usefulness. (For all I know this is already fixed.)

~~~
sytse
I'm sorry to hear that. Consider emailing support@gitlab.com if you keep
having problems with email not being delivered.

------
alexmingoia
It doesn't matter. Really. Why even waste so much time making a choice over
something irrelevant to your software's success? Just do whatever is easier.

------
johnhaquiti
I'm using Gitlab for CI at the moment, it makes things much easier. I miss
some of the simplicity of GitHub however. If you are using CI I would
recommend got lab.

~~~
sytse
How can we make GitLab simpler to make you more comfortable?

------
Tan__
Gitlab is pretty awesome. The interface makes it easy to use.

------
J_Darnley
Easy: Gitlab. It is FLOSS. Github is proprietary.

------
willejs
trello (free) + github (3 free private repos or $9 per user per month for an
org)

Gitlab works, and is decent, but only in certain circumstances.

Pay for SaaS products wherever you can and makes sense. Only build/host your
own things that deliver you business value.

------
cp9
github's where the people are. Everyone already has a github account. Either
way git itself means there isn't too much vendor lock-in, just the ancillary
parts of the project (issues, wiki, project site)

~~~
stephenr
I still find this argument hard to follow.

You have a person who wants to contribute code to you open source project, but
that person is stymied by requiring an account on a service other than GitHub.

What kind of people are you expecting to be doing drive-by code contributions
and what kind of code quality are you expecting from them?

~~~
zardeh
"I don't want to have to jump through hoops to contribute to your project".

I've made a few OSS contribs that were fork, clone and edit locally (or edit
online in one case), push, test, pull request.

That was all, they took ~20 minutes, if that. Adding in "create an account",
"figure out the new UI's method of forking/pulling", and "link myself to
another random webservice that I'll only use once" is too much friction, I
might spend as much time setting up the account as actually making the edit.

Sure, if I'm planning to become a contributor to a large project (like, say
python, which isn't on gh), I'll go ahead and make an account on the
bugtracker and join the mailing list and learn how the hell mercurial works.
That's fine if I expect to make 10+ commits to a project and really delve deep
into it. But most projects aren't big. Most projects aren't that interesting.
OSS thrives on people fixing the one bug they encounter (seriously, look at
the bus number of major projects). Adding friction in the process is bad for
that software.

~~~
dmitry-k
@zardeh Totally agree in that adding friction is bad. At Rhodecode, we tried
to eliminate it, by creating a dedicated page for contributors
([https://rhodecode.com/open-source](https://rhodecode.com/open-source)) and
allowing to login via GitHub / BitBucket.

One more point: although the contributions are not made for the recognition
alone, a bit of it never hurts. We ended up with a badge system for
[https://community.rhodecode.com](https://community.rhodecode.com) , where
code contributors get rights to moderate discussions (since they ARE the core
users of RhodeCode).

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spoiledtechie
I know your looking at GitLab, but with a small team and small free accounts,
I think you should probably look towards BitBucket instead. It has a lot
easier pricing than GitHub.

~~~
gtaylor
Only thing to keep in mind with Bitbucket is that they seem to struggle to
keep things running smoothly. Just spent a year working at a company who used
Bitbucket full time. Their git servers were slow or down at least once a
month, and we never knew if our webhooks would fire on time or at all.

I can't recommend them for anything serious.

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cloudjacker
bitbucket has free private repos and you have to pay for public ones....

