
Atlassian's new terms forbid benchmarking - adtac
https://community.developer.atlassian.com/t/about-the-new-software-terms-scent-of-intel-re-performance/24041
======
orf
Can we please talk about how terrible BitBucket is?

No syntax highlighting on diffs, horrible defaults (closing development branch
when you merge into master???), not being able to make a PR after you make one
commit to a branch without refreshing and loosing your message, inconsistent
code formatting that is just horribly broken in general, weekly downtime
that's not reflected on their status page, having to manually press a button
to see updated diffs after updating a branch, no support for signed commits,
API support lacking in the weirdest places, random failings in commit
webhooks, etc etc.

God I hate it.

~~~
jchw
I've also tried the 10 user licenses for both Jira and Bitbucket servers. I
absolutely loathe Jira. I respect its vast featureset, but user experience as
a programmer has felt absolutely abysmal. The React redesign only confused me
more. To find the Kanban boards, you had to hit the search button! I hope Jira
has improved since last time I used it, but I have to say I'd probably prefer
just about anything else at this point.

As for Bitbucket.... It works, but I can't think of a whole lot it does that
GitLab doesn't do better.

~~~
gchucky
Yeah, Jira is horrible. Between the workflows, search filters (create one,
apply it to a board, but then you can't edit it?) and everything else, it's
really clunky to use.

I've done test runs with other tracking software, and I can't really find
anything better. Every tool sucks in its own way. Do you have a recommendation
on something that you've found that's better than Jira?

~~~
jgresty
I like Phabricator, it doesn't offer as much combustibility as Jira but the
options it does have are good for software development workflows. Plus it is
open source which is always a bonus

[https://phacility.com/phabricator/](https://phacility.com/phabricator/)

~~~
jsjohnst
Is this link a joke? Reading down the page it gets progressively snarkier,
definitely in a way that leads me to think this is satire.

~~~
eru
The phabricator people used to have extremely bad taste in diffs and version
control. See eg [https://stackoverflow.com/questions/20756320/how-to-
prevent-...](https://stackoverflow.com/questions/20756320/how-to-prevent-
phabricator-from-eating-my-commit-history)

(I think you can turn most of the annoyances off. But it leaves a bad
impression. They also seem to like PHP.)

------
sytse
Not allowing people to talk about how you application performs is not
compatible with GitLabs value of transparency. I've added a commitment to
always allowing people to do this to our stewardship promises
[https://gitlab.com/gitlab-com/www-gitlab-
com/commit/da81150e...](https://gitlab.com/gitlab-com/www-gitlab-
com/commit/da81150e8e834bf59ad3f2f24bde6417ef32aa31)

~~~
adtac
Thanks a lot for adding that!

This is a bit offtopic: (OP here) the reason why I was even reading
Atlassian's terms is to understand what kind of language is used in enterprise
self-hosted software because I need one for my own product. I really like
GitLab's open core model (as long as the core is still perfectly usable), and
I was wondering if I could ask you some questions about it as I'm looking to
adopt something very similar? Could I contact you over email about this?

~~~
sytse
For sure. Maybe you want to talk to Jamie, she knows most about this. Her
email is jhurewitz at our domain.

Please have a [https://about.gitlab.com/handbook/ea/#pick-your-brain-
meetin...](https://about.gitlab.com/handbook/ea/#pick-your-brain-meetings)
(public video) so others can benefit as well.

Please reference the url of this response in your email to her.

~~~
adtac
Brilliant, thanks a lot Sid!

~~~
sytse
You're welcome. Jamie just updated our terms to allow benchmarking explicitly
[https://gitlab.com/gitlab-com/www-gitlab-
com/merge_requests/...](https://gitlab.com/gitlab-com/www-gitlab-
com/merge_requests/14975/diffs)

------
jjoonathan
Here's a benchmark for you, Atlassian: your software is slow as molasses and
getting worse with each redesign.

~~~
imglorp
It seems like they're balancing features with speed. In order to get a bunch
of extra features, every page load needs to be 200mb of extra crap that 99% of
users won't use 99% of their page views.

Oh and hamburger menus are hiding the key features you DO use every page view.

~~~
beerlord
Why doesn't JIRA offer a native desktop app? Everyone using it is on PC, Mac
or Linux right? And then a cut-down iOS (iPhone and iPad) app covers the rest?

~~~
ygra
A few colleagues use a Visual Studio extension, although that seems to be
mostly handy for time-tracking and limited interaction with issues. It's also
stuck in a UI that goes back to 2008, so perhaps rather fitting ;)

------
adtac
This is also very similar to the clause that allowed Larry Ellison to
allegedly try to have a professor fired for benchmarking Oracle:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15886333](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=15886333)

I was just going through theirs (and other) terms and conditions to understand
what kind of legalese goes into these and I was appalled at this. While these
terms aren't effective until after 01-Nov-2018, I tried searching online to
see if there was any discussion about how stupid this is, and this unanswered
forum post came up.

I have no idea how this is still considered acceptable.

~~~
snuxoll
It’s not, the Consumer Review Fairness Act prohibits this practice.

~~~
DoofusOfDeath
That's the first I've heard of the CRFA - thanks for mentioning it.

I was curious whether or not the CRFA could be overridden by contract terms,
but the FTC claims quite the contrary: [https://www.ftc.gov/tips-
advice/business-center/guidance/con...](https://www.ftc.gov/tips-
advice/business-center/guidance/consumer-review-fairness-act-what-businesses-
need-know)

~~~
briandear
A contract provision that is unlawful can’t be enforced.

------
GuyPostington
I've submitted many benchmarks over the years for new jira and confluence UI
"upgrades". I've received responses to the tune of, "our developers don't see
that behavior issue on Windows" even though the test systems I used were Linux
based and clearly stated as such. Speaking frankly, the new jira ui is fucking
shit and makes my job slower due to the fact that pertinent information is
obscured and only clearly displayed when I click "use old interface". This
means that I must first wait for the whole page to render, click a link, and
wait for the entire page to redirect to the old UI and render again. Multiply
this for every single ticket I have to open and you can see the minutes tick
off the clock.

~~~
cimmanom
Where is the “old interface” link?

~~~
GuyPostington
For me, it's in the top right corner of every issue.

~~~
cimmanom
Huh, I haven’t seen a link like that in months. Unless... is it inside that
“...” menu?

------
kbos87
I feel like there is a subtle pattern of attitudes and behavior that I pick up
on from Atlassian. It’s almost as though they don’t get that they need to keep
working to innovate and please their customers to stay relevant. Look at what
happened to Hipchat, and what I’d argue will eventually happen to JIRA.

~~~
yborg
>eventually

This happened like 2 years ago at least, every update to Jira makes it slower
and less usable, I have given them this feedback many times, and I suspect I
am not alone, and they simply do not care. Until they see subscriptions drop,
they will do nothing, they are like Rational Software or CA when they hit the
big time and started buying up all their competition.

~~~
59nadir
Which CA are you referring to here?

------
Roritharr
Jira + Confluence Clouds Performance Problems are the Number One reason for
our company to actively seek for ways to get the Atlassian needle out of our
arms. It's really tough once you've invested the time to get Jira just the way
you org works, but the Issues are just piling up and the complaints grow
louder each month.

~~~
anothergoogler
What sorts of issues? For me, performance _is_ the issue, I've never found
JIRA buggy or inadequate, and I'm generally able to find a given ticket and
interact with it in the expected way.

~~~
jimktrains2
> I've never found JIRA buggy

I'm not sure how you can have used the UI and hold this option. I feel like
I've been greeted by the same basic bugs time and time again, like clicking on
an issue ans it not opening until the second click, or opening the previously
viewed issue.

~~~
jjoonathan
It loses drags too. Just awful.

------
j45
I have used JIRA for 5 years and came to it begrudgingly when the project was
complex enough. It handled the complexity, details and customizations of the
project well enough though.

It's funny reporting benchmarking is being banned. The guise of web apps being
too complex to be reasonably communicated is laughable.

There is a 15 year old bug open to reduce the flood of emails Jira can create
from updates. JRASERVER-1369 [1] could be it's own community.

With minimal java/jvm tuning experience, it seems likely the oncloud product
is aggressively cached and resource throttled. Once a page or filter has
loaded, it generally loads quicker.

The speed of an on premise install of JIRA compared to the cloud can be
staggeringly faster.

One solution might be for some clever person to first crawl an entire Jira or
Confluence site, and then continually ping all the pages to keep the system
performing better.

[1]
[https://jira.atlassian.com/browse/JRASERVER-1369](https://jira.atlassian.com/browse/JRASERVER-1369)

------
beepbeepbeep1
[redacted by author request]

~~~
chrisco255
Atlassian employee here. JIRA's backend is not Node based. It's mostly Java.
We do use Node for other products, including Trello, and it's more than fast
enough.

~~~
nojvek
I think of Atlassian as the Trump of software.

It’s slow, annoying UX, and very inconsistent.

But for some reason businesses like it, it is what it is and as an employee I
have little choice so I have to bear with it.

------
towndrunk
It’s obvious they know they have performance problems. They think they can
keep it secret by pulling this kind of crap.

~~~
charliefan1234
It’s no secret. We’re trying our best to drag our 15+ year old codebases into
the modern age. We’re hiring if you want to help!
[https://www.atlassian.com/company/careers](https://www.atlassian.com/company/careers)

~~~
umanwizard
Then what’s the deal with these terms?

I would have serious reservations about working for a company that bans
publishing benchmarks of its software.

------
willsr
After 4 years of dicking around with Jira/Confluence, we finally got rid of
them last month. Haven't looked back since.

~~~
BeeOnRope
What did you replace it with?

~~~
Prefinem
Not parent, but we replaced Atlassian with Github and Pivotal

~~~
jacques_chester
Tracker is one of our best ambassadors, I think.

I miss it sorely when working with Github Issues.

~~~
Prefinem
Tracker?

~~~
ccoggins
Pivotal's project management software

[https://www.pivotaltracker.com/](https://www.pivotaltracker.com/)

~~~
Prefinem
Oh wow. So yeah, I guess we call it pivotal so much at work that I didn’t even
realize it was actually called Pivotal Tracker.

It’s a great product. The speed and ease of use is amazing.

~~~
jacques_chester
Looking at the Tracker website, it's interesting that we play down the
connection back to Pivotal.

Which I guess makes sense, Pivotal as a whole is aiming more towards capital-E
Enterprise.

Our headline products, for reference:
[https://pivotal.io/products](https://pivotal.io/products)

~~~
Prefinem
I will be honest, I was completely unaware of your other products, not that I
would be your target audience. That being said, thank you for not pushing your
other products on tracker users. That was something that always annoyed me
with Atlassian.

------
acd
I question companies prohibiting basic human rights. Free speech is a basic
human right.

Link to UN human rights [https://www.un.org/en/universal-declaration-human-
rights/](https://www.un.org/en/universal-declaration-human-rights/)

Right number 19. Article 19. "Everyone has the right to freedom of opinion and
expression; this right includes freedom to hold opinions without interference
and to seek, receive and impart information and ideas through any media and
regardless of frontiers."

So its a basic human right to be able to express how fast or slow Atlassians
products are.

Further First Amendment to United states constitution

Amendment I

"Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or
prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or
of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to
petition the government for a redress of grievances."
[https://www.law.cornell.edu/constitution/first_amendment](https://www.law.cornell.edu/constitution/first_amendment)

------
jarym
Wow, I last used Jira a long time back when it was pretty much new and loved
it and I loved the values Atlassian had. It was far better than anything I'd
come across before,

Kinda shocked to see all the negative posts on here. How can a product fall so
much?

~~~
scaryclam
To be honest, most companies using Jira never actually configure it to match
their requirements. That's not really their fault, Jira is a beast and quite a
lot of time needs to be put into getting it just right.

Jira's always been hard to get going with, and it's still way better than
pretty much everything else (once configured), but they are _really_ bad at
actually making it easy to use.

~~~
coldcode
The (extremely large) company I work for has a product management team that
customizes Jira to match what it wants which does not work at all for anyone
else. Upper management of course doesn't understand anything about software
development and just wants to see meaningless burndown charts. I am sure its
possible to set up Jira is a useful fashion but damned if I have ever seen it
done.

------
seanwilson
Are there any examples of companies taking action when these kinds of
restrictions are ignored?

I would have thought terms like these would prompt people to release
benchmarks for the sole purpose of generating bad PR if the company actually
took action.

------
sundvor
Two companies, everything else being same; One with JIRA, the other GitHub
Issues wrapped with Waffle, the choice would be a very simple one.

Oh and
[https://twitter.com/HackerNewsOnion/status/98160924222131814...](https://twitter.com/HackerNewsOnion/status/981609242221318145?s=19)

------
mesozoic
Not suprising considering how terrible their products are. You don't need to
benchmark them to know they're slow.

~~~
beerlord
I'd also add that Atlassian are a well-known user of immigrant labour under an
Australian visa scheme similar to the H1-B. They are hugely pro-immigration
publicly also. (Despite this, their founder just bought a huge mansion in a
very expensive part of Sydney completely protected from population growth due
to restrictive bylaws).

I'd propose that they are hiring cheap workers just to keep the ship afloat,
rather than to radically improve it.

~~~
charliefan1234
I’d propose that you’re wrong - with relocation and visa costs it’s
significantly more expensive to bring in someone from overseas. Not to mention
it’s frequently 3-4 months after interviewing before they can start, as
opposed to 3-4 weeks for a local hire. We hire as many local people as we can,
the interview process isn’t any different.

The other aspect of the founders believing in the importance of being able to
hire talent from overseas is actually at the higher levels - the local talent
pool of managers with 10+ years experience running large SaaS orgs is pretty
small, given the industry here is fledgling. We’ve developed our own leaders
internally, but there’s no substitute for bringing in an external hire to
develop the next generation of leaders.

------
ofrzeta
Recently there was some discussion about how restriction like these are void
in the EU, see
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18064772](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=18064772)

I always wondered how or if it is possible to place arbitrary restriction on
software use.

Also I wonder if a clause like this would be binding for tech journalists who
run a benchmark because essentially they don't really agree to the license
when they are testing software.

------
sh87
> Cloud terms Para 3.3

> Except as otherwise expressly permitted in these Terms, you will not [...]
> (c) use the Cloud Products for the benefit of any third party;

What does that even mean ? "benefit" is such loose language. Can I not use
JIRA to build anything that 'benefit's my customers? Can someone with
experience working on such terms throw some light on this ?

------
unlikelyzero
This is hilarious.

At one point I was writing test automation against their JIRA Cloud offering,
because they didn't provide an analog to their authentication API in the JIRA
on-prem version.

To get the tests to pass, I had to create a jiraRetryFixture and when that
didn't work I wrote a preflight check which would just skip those tests if it
wasn't available.

------
enkarta
Slow/frustrating UIs can be one of the biggest barriers to productivity.

At Monolist ([https://monolist.co](https://monolist.co)), we’re building a
streamlined task experience that integrates deeply with Jira (and Confluence)
Cloud specifically so you don’t have to deal with these painful UIs.

------
thomasfedb
What's a decent alternative to Jira for support/workflow (non-software)?

------
Tongueincheek
Is Atlassian still a thing? Why?

~~~
x0x0
No serious alternative to jira (if you have one, I would _love_ to know about
it).

Hard to find a decent alternative to confluence for an internal wiki,
particularly one with a good ACL system. We need certain customer details
locked to just the people servicing those accounts.

~~~
ssijak
Youtrack

~~~
x0x0
thank you

------
mholt
The HN title is misleading: the terms do not forbid benchmarking, just public
dissemination of the benchmarks. This is a standard software EULA clause.

One reason we decided to keep this clause in the Caddy EULA (which I should
clarify here only applies to official binaries, not the open source, Apache-
built binaries you can make yourself) is because we found out that very few
people are expert enough to benchmark correctly. I've read a dozen Caddy
benchmarks, for example, that turned out to be based on false assumptions or
had hidden factors or were simply not reproducible (and not just by me).

Benchmarking requires expertise that, it turns out, very few people have. I
don't think I even have enough skills to do it correctly and meaningfully.

Also, web servers are complex enough (in terms of both configuration and all
the layers involved with networking stacks) that one correct benchmark is not
generally useful to the next person.

Spreading wrong performance information can hurt a business. It's not that
there's anything to hide or any desire to take away your freedom -- and I
would normally be one to assume the worst from any large company -- it's just
business: they don't want the risk of bad PR based on a possibly false
premise, especially when that information tends to only create negative hype
rather than actually being useful.

Anyway, this link doesn't seem like news. Just usual HN hype.

~~~
carapace
> Benchmarking requires expertise that, it turns out, very few people have. I
> don't think I even have enough skills to do it correctly and meaningfully.

Very important and often overlooked point.

But I wonder, why not forbid public dissemination of _inaccurate, non-
reproducible_ benchmarks?

> Spreading wrong performance information can hurt a business.

Wouldn't that be libel? (IANAL)

~~~
mesozoic
Expertise so rare it seems Atlassian themselves don't have it.

