Item — HN Reader

I somehow had a feeling Gitlab would be bought this year, but the list dramatically falls apart upon closer inspection:

- Google: will never work, completely different mindset and engineering culture. Gitlab feels way too unrefined (in a good sense).

- AWS: Gitlab is already too different from their tech, and will never be that tightly coupled with the rest of AWS.

- IBM: :') they wish

- MS: already has GitHub

Any others?

I think any giant company would have a hard time integrating all-remote Gitlab.

5 comments

Being all-remote makes it harder to get acquired. Even if the acquirer is forward thinking, there are many complications to be addressed (compliance with existing hr/payroll/etc).

Last I've checked Gitlab was en route to IPO which makes sense given their unique structure.

> Being all-remote makes it harder to get acquired

Do you think this has changed amid the pandemic, though?

Wouldn't having a proven remote workforce actually increase your desirability?

I actually have no idea, but isn't "open core" a turn-off to would-be acquirers as well, since the core can fork out from under them if they try to work too hard against the wishes of the community? Maybe there have been open core acquisitions. I don't follow startup news that closely.

Who would maintain the fork?

I think you're underestimating the power of a boatload of cash. All of the companies you listed could afford to buy gitlab.

Sure they could, but it still needs to make sense from either a growth or a defense play. I don't see that for any of these companies.

> I think any giant company would have a hard time integrating all-remote Gitlab.

Atlassian maybe? (shudder)

I would stop using gitlab immediately if that happened.

If we are thinking less-than-ideal buyers, I could imagine Oracle or SAP could be interested?

Don't they already have Bitbucket?

They bought Trello even they have Jira

They do, along with several other competing products.

Facebook? duck