Comment by frutiger
8 years ago
If you ever get something for free, remember something somewhere is subsidizing it. Whether that's the other paid accounts, which therefore must be uncompetitively priced, VC funding (which will eventually run out), or your data is sold.
I can't speak for Gitlab, but offering free Bitbucket should easily pay for itself as introduction to the Atlassian ecosystem.
Our experience went like this: We got Bitbucket for out project for the good free private repos (and a few other reasons). When it came to choosing a ticket system, being on Bitbucket made choosing Jira a no-brainer (one of the best ticket systems, good integration with Bitbucket, familiar interface). Then we needed a better wiki for internal documentation, so we naturally went with Confluence.
So getting free Bitbucket heavily influenced our decision to buy two other products from the same company, and we are about to buy into their CI system (Bitbucket Pipelines, not the other one). We don't regret any of those choices, but they might have looked different if we were on Github.
> your data is sold
It's now easier to see some of this, with the GDPR rules.
The Gitlab cookie page lists 80 "marketing" cookies which may be set: https://about.gitlab.com/privacy/cookies/
Wow. On the one hand I'm impressed with the openness (almost - what does purpose='unclassified' mean?), as well as the option to elect which cookie category I agree to. On the other hand... my, that's a lot of tracking!
Something similar (sometimes exactly this interface) is shown on about every third newly visited website I look at from the EU, since 25 May.
If you don't see this, it could be informative to use a British or Irish VPN (to keep an English language default) for a day or two.
Most of which you can now disable disallow on first visit.
I use a huge amount of open-source software which I do not believe is subsidized.
Some is, eg some linux/gnome devs are paid to contribute. But many smaller projects/components are volunteer-only.
> But many smaller projects/components are volunteer-only.
Someone is paying for it with their spare time. Spare time doesn't last forever.
If you're not paying for something, you should see it either as a temporary shortcut that eventually needs a more sustainable fix, or something you don't care about if it disappears.
While I understand, and kinda agree, the idea that Volunteer only projects are not susceptible longer term and your implication that commercial products are more sustainable over a long term is provably false
Many many many many many commercial software projects, that people paid money for, are killed every single year.. Many other volunteer only projects last for decades, some of which have been critical to the very foundation of the web.
So no "if you are not paying for you should see it as a temporary shortcut" is a completely false statement
It's subsidized by those volunteers' time. Time that could otherwise be spent on other things.
Granted, there's nothing nefarious about this, but there isn't anything necessarily nefarious about the fact that anything you get for free is being paid for somewhere else. Just potentially nefarious, if you don't know what's paying for it.
...the other paid accounts, which therefore must be uncompetitively priced,...
That doesn't follow. If the paid accounts are selling, then they must be priced appropriately relative to their competition and the value they provide. The cost doesn't factor into it - and free accounts are just a marketing cost, like putting up a billboard.
A public and a private repo costs the same to host, so I don’t see your point