Re: [RFC] switch to GitLab / gitlab.com

[David Kastrup]

Karlin High <address@hidden> writes:

> On 2/7/2020 1:59 AM, Jonas Hahnfeld wrote:
>> re "single-patch commits": Firstly we currently push multiple commits
>> from one review (at least Dan and I do), so I don't fully understand
>> the point.
>
> I probably didn't relate the discussion properly. It had to do with
> commits vs branch merges. This post raises the question:
>
> <https://lists.gnu.org/archive/html/lilypond-devel/2018-04/msg00023.html>
>
> And these seemed like GitLab's answer to it:
>
> <https://docs.gitlab.com/ee/user/project/merge_requests/squash_and_merge.html>
>
> <https://docs.gitlab.com/ee/user/project/merge_requests/fast_forward_merge.html>
>
>> Do we need to import from Rietveld? The current issues have links to
>> the reviews, I think we should just get as much out of SF as possible
>> and keep the references to the external system.
>
> I think you're right.
>
>> I first want to gather consensus that GitLab is really a platform that
>> (at least) a large part of the community could agree on, for the scoped
>> purpose of replacing the three tools we currently use.
>
> Very good. Does anyone know of reasons why GitLab would NOT be a good
> fit for Lilypond? I won't know them due to lack of experience, and
> don't feel I have anything further to say here.

I am currently reading up on its corporate history and structure.  What
I find encouraging in this regard is that they have a lot of corporate
customers and significant earnings in comparison with their market
valuation.  That makes a "looking for buyout" scenario less likely, a
scenario that has significant odds of us landing in an environment one
did not originally anticipate (note that the last corporate owner
changes to SourceForge actually were beneficial with regard to our own
situation, but that is an exception more than the rule).

There have been numerous ostensibly free services expanding a lot with
VC money that ended up getting bought out when they achieved a strategic
importance without a clearcut income perspective in proportion to their
valuation.  GitHub, now owned by Microsoft, comes to mind, as well as
projects like Gitorious that were just bought up (by GitLab, actually)
and retired.  Google is one company that managed to pivot from being a
free service without a clearcut business model to a market leader in,
uh, whatever?

What really puzzles me right now reading up on GitLab history that in
2017 they acquired Gitter.  Gitter is an instant messaging service for
_GitHub_ (yes, that is correct) users requiring maximum permissions and
having pervasive logging.  That seems to only make business sense in the
data gathering business, for internal or external use.

Sorry, this is all not much more than banter right now.  Basically I
don't see any obvious red flags.

-- 
David Kastrup