- GitLab announced that they were going to start including third party telemetry. This predictably annoyed developers. They made it substantially worse by originally announcing that it would be included in self-hosted enterprise versions as well (a really big no-no from many companies perspective), and by tone deaf comments from the CFO that made it clear they were going to violate the GDPR.
- GitLab started talking about not allowing people working in support rolls to live in China, Russia, and Ukraine because of security concerns brought up by a customer. No one ever really came up with a good justification for why Ukraine was on the list, so it was removed (but you will still see references to it in some of the earlier discussions). Someone noticed the discussion and posted it here (and elsewhere). Communication around what they're actually planning on doing has been pretty poor, likely partially as a result of this being noticed on their public-yet-internal issue tracker instead of being released via clearly written messages. Some people have legal concerns about it (see: anti boycott laws), some have ethical issues, others think it sounds fine. Meanwhile the issue on gitlab itself has been subjected to intense astroturfing by largely new accounts which caused it to be locked. The new development today is that the director of compliance has resigned since they are of the opinion that what they are planning to do is illegal.
Personally I think they're still pretty well regarded, but these two events in such close proximity have definitely given them a bloody nose.
- GitLab announced that they were going to start including third party telemetry. This predictably annoyed developers. They made it substantially worse by originally announcing that it would be included in self-hosted enterprise versions as well (a really big no-no from many companies perspective), and by tone deaf comments from the CFO that made it clear they were going to violate the GDPR.
- GitLab started talking about not allowing people working in support rolls to live in China, Russia, and Ukraine because of security concerns brought up by a customer. No one ever really came up with a good justification for why Ukraine was on the list, so it was removed (but you will still see references to it in some of the earlier discussions). Someone noticed the discussion and posted it here (and elsewhere). Communication around what they're actually planning on doing has been pretty poor, likely partially as a result of this being noticed on their public-yet-internal issue tracker instead of being released via clearly written messages. Some people have legal concerns about it (see: anti boycott laws), some have ethical issues, others think it sounds fine. Meanwhile the issue on gitlab itself has been subjected to intense astroturfing by largely new accounts which caused it to be locked. The new development today is that the director of compliance has resigned since they are of the opinion that what they are planning to do is illegal.
Personally I think they're still pretty well regarded, but these two events in such close proximity have definitely given them a bloody nose.