Installing Gitlab was definitely one of the painpoints, having an executable that just works is amazing
What are people's thoughts on open software projects like this eating into github licensing money? I feel guilty sometimes pushing gitlab since I really like github as a company (and want them to thrive)
I switched to Fossil because of this monoculture. I am sure Github don't mind one less freeloader.
In terms of private repository hosting, I feel that some companies simply prefer self-hosted solutions no matter how good Github is.
Not only prefer but sometimes its required based on compliance and regulations and such.
I absolutely love the product. The install guide is fantastic, I don't know if that can be any better than it already is. The thing is, I'm a little paranoid about downloading & installing random binaries on our computers at work (I work in a very IP-sensitive company), so I generally go for source-builds.
I've actually been writing a fabric script to automate the entire install, believe it or not (the whole thing might be an exercise in futility, since people could just download the package), and I've installed gitlab enough times that I'm not really worried about it -- so at this point it's not a huge problem.
There were already other options that were very simple to install and upgrade, such as Gitblit and Gitbucket. At work we are using Gitblit. It provides all the functionality you'd expect, and one of the nice advantages is that it can store tickets in an orphan branch, so that you have these in git too.
I've actually rolled up my sleeves and written some login adapters (for internal use) in gitlab, and I'm much more comfortable writing ruby in rails than I would ever be writing Java. Again, this is probably a stupid opinion, but until I see the Java light, I don't think I'll be back to it.
Also, gitblit looks nowhere as good as gitlab (or even gitorious) does. Neither does gitbucket -- they don't have the polish that I see on other solutions... Yeah it's a really fickle point, but I want to reward groups that also prioritize design/visuals in their projects.