Gitlab has introduced a five-user limit for free groups

EDIT: clarified antecedent

I think there is a glitch in your mail or something else is going wrong. I'm currently not in any groups and still got an e-mail telling me that my top level group (starting with 5060) has reached the 5 members limit. Searching for the group also doesn't yield any results whatsoever.

i just logged in and there is no indication of any limit.

i had to step through every group to find out where the limit was reached.

turns out that there was one group that had two sub groups which added up to 5 members. at the group overview this is listed as "two" (for the two subgroups). it would be very helpful if the group overview (https://gitlab.com/dashboard/groups) would list the total number of people as well as flag every group where the limit is reached or crossed.

but, you say the limit is 5 people. in this group there are exactly 5 people, yet the warning claims 'Your top-level group is over the 5 user limit and has been placed in a read-only state.'

how can that be? 5 is more than 5?

it doesn't matter in my case because this is an old project no longer worked on, so read only is fine, and there is no need to act, but i think you need to work on your system because i am sure there will be more cases like that.

lastly i want to add that while that limit is fine for small businesses, it is an absolute disaster for FOSS projects. FOSS projects don't have the funding to pay for your service, so they won't. their only option is to leave. if any of my projects get any traction then i have no choice but to go look for a more FOSS friendly service. i thought gitlab was that, i wanted to make a point against github and support their most likely competitor by drawing attention to you.

gitlab really does not gain anything by enforcing this limit for FOSS projects. FOSS projects often have many members that are not very active. a busy startup with 5 members probably creates the same activity and uses the same resources as a FOSS project with 50 members because most of those 50 members rarely contribute to the project.

or instead of limiting members, limit how often the more expensive resources are used. like limiting how often the CI is running.

i urge you to consider to allow a higher limit for groups that only have projects that use a FOSS license.

“On display? I eventually had to go down to the cellar to find them.”

“That’s the display department.”

“With a flashlight.”

“Ah, well, the lights had probably gone.”

“So had the stairs.”

“But look, you found the notice, didn’t you?”

“Yes,” said Arthur, “yes I did. It was on display in the bottom of a locked filing cabinet stuck in a disused lavatory with a sign on the door saying ‘Beware of the Leopard.”

To say some service is "Free" (for now) means you're paying something that isn't disclosed. Even if you're paying in time as beta-tester, you're still paying. And you're still paying in data.

Whereas, GitLab on-prem install is largely under MIT license, which is widely considered to be a very permissive license. I could see the FTC coming to similar agreement with that statement.

This scheme is basically dumping, where you (a company) lower the price of your good and then flood the market to kill all competitors. Then when they're good and dead, you jack up the prices to extortionate levels and sit back and get piles of money, from people with no choice.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dumping_(pricing_policy)

The last big antitrust push we had was against Microsoft. And after the judge was replaced for improper communication during trial, MS and DoJ settled. Basically, was a huge case then "Oops nevermind".

Github Actions might not be the best but so is Buildkite. It's not exactly strictly better in every way.

Having used all 3 mentioned, it'd be Gitlab > Github > Buildkite for CI/CD for me.

Github wins at least by the sheer community support. Every vendor has an action.

You mention buildkite as something you think is a lot better than GH Actions. I'm curious if you've also used the Gitlab equivalent and can compare (I haven't, really).

Have they outdone Oracle? Impressive! :)

On a serious note, is your comment based on historical or recent events?

How are they an enemy?

They're also buggy, and in my experience I keep hitting bugs that are long-tail and therefore never prioritized to actually fix.

[LOL. A previous edit autocorrected "autopush" to "autopsy." Or maybe it was a Freudian slip on my part.]

That is the one thing you can’t disable on GitHub unless something changed recently. Very annoying for mirrors where development happens elsewhere.

The real giveaway though, was the fact that stock dividends - you know, the thing that historically you buy stock for - are basically unheard of among all but the biggest companies in tech (and even unheard of among some of those). We have now an entire generation of leaders in tech for whom profitability has been this kind of abstract notion they didn't have to think about much, which explains why they all seem so ham-fisted now that they're being forced to.

The reason so many companies are doing such a terrible job of it right now, is that frankly there aren't many c-levels in tech who are mentally equipped to think about their business that way, and even fewer who have ever been in a position where they had to. Reddit's the latest example of this: 18 years and never been profitable? And Huffman calls himself a libertarian? Good grief.

I'm glad of it. Our industry is filled with basically con-men who have no idea how to run a business profitably (or interest in doing so) but have made up for it by having the right phone numbers etc. It's good that they're being squeezed, because it creates room for people who want to run an honest business.