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Comment by mroche | Hacker News Reader

For those of you using GitLab, BitBucket, or <insert-other-git-host-competitor-here>, does this make you consider switching back at all? If so, why?

It may be myopic, but the only major reason I can think of is visibility if you plan on publicizing the repo at some point. But you can achieve this by using GitHub as a mirror for your main repo on another platform (at least for GitLab, I’m not familiar with BitBucket).

Edit: Personally, I use GitLab (both .com and I've set up/maintain several sefl-hosted solutions). I originally tried out GitLab due to lack of private repos on GitHub, and I don't see a reason I should switch back at this point. The open development and attitude towards the product and community has been part of that.

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Nope.

Github was always the go-to option and there was no reason to really even consider alternatives at first. People said "Bitbucket has free private repos!" for years and that was interesting but not compelling. Few users left Github because their competitors had free private repos.

Github got acquired, and that acquisition basically erased any and all user trust in Github as a company because they no longer control their own destiny. Instead we have to trust Microsoft. And that was a big enough shock for people to actually consider all of the competitors instead of just defaulting to Github like they did before.

To some extent, I suspect people paid for private repos from Github because they believed in supporting Github as a company and $7/mo isn't that much. Nobody believes in supporting Microsoft as a company. Microsoft charging for private repos is like Disney having a Patreon account.

> Nobody believes in supporting Microsoft as a company.

I believe Microsoft has been doing amazing things for developers the past few years.

Sure, but you're not going to give Microsoft money because you like them and want them to do well, and that was probably the main motivation behind paying for private repos. It was never purely a value proposition of, "private repos are worth $8/mo", it was a value proposition of, "Github is a valued part of the community and I'm willing to pay a token subscription fee in exchange for some token extra features". Partially because, well, it takes money to run Github and if people don't support them, they'd go broke and have to find some big corporate entity to acquire them.[1]

Sure, that motivation started to erode the longer that Github stayed around and the more money they made on their enterprise products, but there was never a sudden shift that forced anyone to reconsider the question until Microsoft came in.

[1] Editing with footnote: This is also one reason Bitbucket struggled despite having free private repos. Atlassian is big and corporate and widely resented already, so they couldn't even offer that value proposition anymore than Microsoft can.

Bitbucket offered free private repos and was struggling before it was acquired by Atlassian.

I use BitBucket for my solo private repositories specifically because it was free. They are a trivial load to the provider in both storage and transactions.

Repositories which I make public I put on GitHub since that seems to be where people will find them and are more likely to contribute.

Had this policy been in place when I started using git I never would have found and used Bitbucket, but I don't feel anything is gained by moving my private BitBuckets to GitHub.

Update: I see another reply talking about the web interfaces. If I used them that might be a factor, but for my private stuff the only web functions I use are for creating the repositories, and both platforms get that done easily enough.

If I was still on Bitbucket, this would have been enough for me to switch back.

Since moving to Gitlab, I couldn't go back to having to run Jenkins for private projects after using Gitlab CI (with a self-hosted runner). Also even on the free tier, even for one-man projects, the issue tracker features are better than github.

> does this make you consider switching back at all

No. I'm old enough to remember the way Microsoft operated for most of their history, and do not trust them.

yeah. I'm dropping Bitbucket in favor of this for my private projects. BitBucket's UI is so un-intuitive that I (most of the time) dread actually having to log into the web UIs for it.

I'm also just much more comfortable with GitHub since I use it daily in my day job.

Fair point. I've only been to a few BitBucket repos in the past year or two and I never really enjoyed the experience.

> For those of you using GitLab, BitBucket, or <insert-other-git-host-competitor-here>, does this make you consider switching back at all? If so, why?

Absolutely, though I don't think it's really "switching back". I always preferred to use GitHub but had to use BitBucket for private repos. Now I don't need to bother with BitBucket.

>does this make you consider switching back at all? If so, why?

Complete opposite. I'm going to stop using it as much as I can.

This is quite annoying. I'd much rather they take my pittance than monetize me any other way.

I am confused by this sentiment. Wouldn't moving to another product (like bitbucket or gitlab) put you in the same boat (since they also offer free private repositories)?

GitLab's free private repos have the same feature set as their public ones. Not so with GitHub's, and this blog post hides that fact.

https://github.com/pricing#feature-comparison

Thanks for sharing this detail with everyone.

Not quite.

https://about.gitlab.com/pricing/

The free tier is the functionality you get for private repos. Public (not internal) repos get Gold capabilities.

Runner limits can be eliminated if you host your own runner to hook in to.

The above is specifically for GitLab.com hosting. Self-hosted is a different story with features.

Ah hah - true. Thanks!

Typically I use Bitbucket during initial phase, when the project is still in active development. Once I'm happy with the code after a while, I move it to GitHub.

But I don't want the BB version to become outdated so I end up maintaining 2 repos. Having private repos directly on GitHub will optimise my worflow. Definitely a good move.

Gitlab is vastly better in so many different ways that this doesn't even come close to making me want to switch back.

The UI needs some love but I've been impressed with the feature set.

I would definitely choose it over GitHub Enterprise.

GitHub integration in visual studio is quite good, I might switch back from gitlab because of that. I just didn’t think it was worth 8 dollars a month before.

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