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Gitlab is also 3 years younger as a company, and Github had a undeniable first-mover advantage in the space.

GitLab the open source project was started in 2011. GitLab the company didn't start until 2014. GitHub is 6 years older than GitLab.

On the other hand, GitLab didn't have to do any UI work to start with, they just appeared to copy and paste GitHub.

Huh? It doesn’t look the same at all, or at least it doesn’t now or at any time I used it.

Today they have their own identity, but when they started GL was basically a clone of what GH was at the time.