Comment by hirako2000

IPO and quarterly demand for profit.

Gitlab was generous first, to rise as a valid alternative to GitHub. They never got the comminity aspect right, perhaps aiming for profitability with a focus on the runners instances which is how they make money.

With profitability, the IPO made sense.

GitHub probably had a different strategy..keep it generous, get the entire open source community, keep raising money and one day someone will buys us out for billions. We we are, Microsoft goal is to capture the community, it works. It's sticky.