►
From YouTube: Becoming a Profitable Open Source Company at Scale
Description
GitLab has open source software at its core and was one of the first open core companies in the cloud native CI space. On this livestream from OSLS 2019, GitLab Co-Founder and CEO Sid Sijbrandij will discuss what it takes to build an open core company and the role that open source plays in meeting the challenges of building any software at scale. The episode will also give Sid’s perspective on the significance of the new CD Foundation, announced at The Linux Foundation’s Open Source Leadership Summit, and GitLab’s involvement in its formation as a founding member.
A
Alive
right
now,
no
so
here
we
are
welcome
nice
to
see
you
said
I'm
here
with
Sid
sub
Ronnie
he's
a
CEO
of
KITT
lab
and
you're,
also
the
founder
yep,
and
wanted
to
have
a
little
chat
with
you,
because
you're
gonna
be
giving
a
keynote
today-
and
this
is
the
beginning
of
our
show,
the
new
stack
at
scale
and
we're
very
excited
to
work
with
KITT
lab
on
this
project.
So
thank
you
very
much
yeah.
Well,
thanks
for
having
us
yeah.
A
B
So
commercial
open
source
software
companies
are
companies
that
are
the
steward
of
an
open
source
project,
but
are
also
building
a
business
around
it.
Most
of
them
tend
to
be
venture
back
like
to
us.
So
on
one
hand
they
want
to
see
the
open
source
software
grow.
On
the
other
hand,
they
also
need
to
get
to
a
liquidity
event
exactly.
B
So
get
lab
was
started
by
my
co-founder
Demetri
in
2011
and
he
built
it
because
he
needed
it
himself.
He
was
in
the
Ukraine
working
for
a
large
software
company
and
he
was
living
in
a
house
there.
He
didn't
have
streaming
water
every
morning.
He
got
up,
went
to
the
well
and
and
got
some
buckets
of
water,
but
he
had
a
bigger
problem
in
his
life
and
that
was
they
didn't,
have
any
good
collaboration
software
at
work.
So
he
said:
I'm
gonna
fix
this
and
they
didn't
have
any
money
for
it.
B
So
he
said
well,
I'll
just
make
it
myself,
so
he
went
out
and
created
gitlab
and
within
a
year
300
people
joined
the
project
Wow.
How
did
you
meet
him?
I
saw
it
on
Hacker
News,
someone
posted
yet
I
have
to
hacker
news
and
I
was
like.
Oh,
this
makes
so
much
sense,
something
you
collaborate
with
that.
That's
also
something
you
can
contribute
back
to
well.
A
B
I
said
you
know,
what
get
lab
is
only
available
for
download,
but
SAS
is
the
future,
so
I'm
gonna
start
get
laughs,
calm
and
I
put
up
a
beta
for
people
to
sign
up
to
then
it
didn't
trend.
So
it's
quite
disappointed
and
went
downstairs
to
bake
pancakes
and
then
I
checked
my
phone
one
last
time
and
that
was
on
the
homepage.
I
asked
my
now
wife
to
finish
up
the
pancakes
I
went
upstairs
and
I
set
there
eating
pancakes
and
answering
questions
the
entire
night.
A
B
So
all
these
people
signed
up
for
the
beta
I
started.
It
I
gave
him
access,
but
turn
out
to
be
really
hard
to
monetize
dot-com,
but
at
the
same
time
we
had
all
these
people
that
were
using
the
self-managed
instances
that
were
running
it
themselves
and
asking
for
more
features
and
then
at
some
point,
Demetri
tweeted
I
want
to
work
on
get
live
full-time
just
out
to
the
entire
world.
B
So
I
put
one
on
one
together,
I
said:
Demetri
you're
gonna
help
these
really
huge
companies
that
are
already
running
get
laugh,
make
their
features
and
we're
gonna
charge.
For
that
we
tried
a
few
other
things:
a
few
other
business
models
before
we
tried
donations,
but
Demetri
called
it
ice
cream
money
because
he
could.
It
was
$7.
He
and
his
wife
could
get
ice
cream
for
it
every
month.
We
got
it
up
to
$1,000,
but
it
wasn't
sustainable
right.
A
B
For
example,
we
also
did
pay
development,
so
people
could
pay
us
to
build
features
for
them
and
we
thought
that
was
beautiful.
That
way,
all
the
features
could
stay
open
source,
but
the
problem
was.
It
was
super
hard
to
purchase
that
every
company
we
tried
that
at
said,
okay.
Well,
we
have
a
preferred
provider
for
this,
so
we
first
need
to
go
to
the
preferred
provider
and
they
said
well.
We
only
have
Java
programmers,
but
they
want
to.
They
want
to
contribute
this
feature.
B
So
now
we
were
working
with
people
who
weren't
very
eloquent
in
in
the
programming
language
that
we
used
and
we
spent
a
lot
of
time
reviewing
their
feature
and
still
they
didn't
make
any
money
it
turns
out.
It
was
way
easier
for
people
to
just
person
purchase
a
subscription,
so
we
started
selling
subscriptions
that
allows
you
to
use
proprietary
features
that
we
added
on
top
of
the
open-source
project.
So.
B
A
B
I
think
that
this
so-called
open
core
model
is
the
model
that
works.
It
is
so
that
some
other
companies
are
betting
heavily
on
their
sass,
their
software
as-a-service.
Well,
we
are
more
heavy
on
the
self-managed
model
and
I
expected
people
to
kind
of
start
going
to
sass
more,
but
that
that
transformation
has
hasn't
happened
yet
for
DevOps
tooling,
also
because
there's
so
much
other
tooling,
to
integrate
with
there's.
A
So
much
tooling
to
integrate
with,
and
one
of
the
observations
that
we've
found
is
one
of
the
observations
that
we've
discovered
is
that
what's
coming,
what's
coming
around
is
really
just
the
continuing
evolution
of
how
do
you
build
applications,
and
how
do
you
do
really
efficiently
how
you
are
you
really
smart
about
it?
It.
B
A
B
And
they
built
their
own
custom
tool
chain
to
do
that,
but
at
a
significant
scale
you
have
between
50
and
100
people
trying
to
integrate
all
of
that,
and
we
think
that's
a
that's
undifferentiated
heavy
lifting
that
shouldn't
be
one
company
doing
that
we
should
collaborate
on
that
and
get
labs
used
by
over
a
hundred
thousand
companies,
and
it
has
all
those
things
you
can
plan
roadmaps.
You
can
do
feature
flags,
you
can
package
it
up.
You
can
monitor
it.
You
can
secure
and
defend
it
all
in
a
single
application.
B
A
B
A
A
How
many
employees,
you
said:
500
500
people
and
that's
fantastic,
so
now
we're
at
this
end,
whereas
if
this
interesting
point
aren't
we
in
2019,
where
there's
more
open
source
software
companies
there's
more
successful
ones,
I
think
we
were
talking
about
hashey
Corp
earlier
as
one
example
that
and
then
there's
these
hybrid
cloud
service
providers
out
there
who
I
know
that
it's
how
you
describe
them.
How
do
you
think
about
this
landscape
right
now,
then
I'd
like
to
get
into
some
specific
questions
about
it.
What's
your
thought,
yeah.
B
I
think
it's
interesting
so
we're
seeing
that
open
source
software
is
winning
even
the
hyper
clouds
are
like
embracing
it,
the
UCF
proprietary
offerings,
but
now
they
have
to
offer
like
Kafka
as
a
service,
because
your
customers
are
demanding
open
source
software.
So
I
think
that's
a
very
exciting
development.
Kubernetes
is
winning
all
the
open
source
offerings
are
winning,
but
also
what
we're
seeing
is
that
the
hyper
clouds
one
offer
more
open
source
for
free
to
their
customers,
which
makes
sense,
but
that
is
that
there's
going
to
be
interesting
to
see
how
that
plays
out.
B
A
And
when
we're
talking
about
that
we're
seeing
a
real
evolution
of
open
source
discussions
to
yesterday,
Amazon
announced
its
open
distro
for
elasticsearch,
and
they
make
agent
Cockroft
actually
States.
It
varies
specifically
that
there
have
been
some
maintainer
xand,
open
source
projects
that
have
muddied
the
waters,
and
those
waters
are
now
muddied,
and
now
it
puts
the
developer
community
in
a
place
where
they
are
not
trustful.
A
B
It's
Amazon
doing
a
forking
commoditize
of
open-source,
so
a
fork,
an
open
source,
open
core
project
and
then
the
proprietary
features
that
used
to
be
the
lifeblood
of
the
commercial
open
source
company.
They
are
now
open,
sourcing
and
I
think
that's
great
for
their
customers,
that's
great
for
users
and
that's
great
for
open
source.
But
it's
gonna
be
interesting
to
see
us
as
commercial
open
source
software
companies.
How
we
deal
with
this
mm-hmm.
B
A
A
B
Think
it's
a
beautiful
thing
like
these.
These
very
open
licenses,
like
MIT
and
Apache,
allow
everything
everyone
to
do
what
they
want
and
that
freedom
I
think
is
at
the
core
of
open-source.
But
it's
it's
interesting
like
I.
Can
imagine
I
understand
why
companies
like
elastic
and
Redis
labs
and
MongoDB
they
they
started
adding
these
non-compete
licenses.
That
said,
look
it's
open
and
free
for
everyone,
except
if
you
compete
with
our
SAS
service.
I
I
can
there's
something
to
be
said
for
that.
B
A
Let's
talk
about
your
platform
architecture
for
a
bit
and
then
bring
that
into
context
kind
of
with
overall,
this
I
think
discussion
that
relates
back
to
open
source
and
discussion,
we're
having
earlier
about
foundations
and
the
roles
that
they
take
and
how
you
need
to
really
kind
of
be
very
clear
in
your
discussions.
So
you
know
when
you're
when
you
know
for
yourself,
you
know
with
this.
We
know
with
these
ongoing
developments.
You
know
what
is
then
the
role
of
open
source
software
from
like
a
foundation
perspective
for
a
company
like
gitlab
yeah.
B
We
we
are
not
gay
love
is
not
a
foundation
project
and,
for
example,
Kafka
is
so
I.
Think
Africa
is
an
Apache
foundation
project
and
it
means
that
the
the
trademark
of
Kafka
is
is
in
the
Apache
foundation,
and
other
people
can
call
there
think
Africa
and
confluence
confluent
has
to
be
very,
very
clear
that
those
are
distinct
things
there's
something
to
be
said
for
that,
like
it
equals
the
playing
field
a
bit
more
for
other
offerings.
B
In
practice,
we
don't
see
a
lot
of
those
off
other
offerings
and
it
makes
makes
communication
a
bit
harder
because
you
constantly
have
these
two
different
names.
I
think
that
that
the
hyper
clouds
are
likely
to
engage
in
all
kinds
of
forms,
all
kinds
of
foundations
like
to
see
ncf
in
which
they
participate
and
they're
gonna
try
to
rally
other
companies
behind
these
efforts
to
for
can
commoditize
in.
A
Terms
of
the
CD
foundation,
then
what
what
is
youth?
What
do
you
feel
is
like
the
role
that
get
lap
plays
in
there
there's
a
lot
of
companies
here
that
are,
you
know,
representing
kind
of
their
own.
You
know
solutions
really
sort
of
speak.
A
lot
of
them
have
I
think
become
become
solutions
once
they
move
into
the
enterprise
right,
but
their
services,
their
technology,
architect,
union
technology
platforms.
Why
would
you
join
something
like
this?
What's
what's
the
reasoning
for
it,
yeah.
B
I
think
there
needs
to
be
a
standardization
of
continuous
delivery,
like
every
company
is
right,
now
is
kind
of
creating
their
own
custom
tool
chain,
and
it's
just
a
burden
that
that
shouldn't
be
there
we'd
get
lapped.
Today
we
already
offer
a
solution
where
everything
is
integrated,
all
the
way
from
planning
to
creating
to
packaging,
to
monitoring.
We
think
that's
a
great
solution,
but
we
we
want
to
be
open
to
standards.
That
rise
up
to
the
industry,
for
example,
from
ETS
was
a
great
monitoring
solution.
B
A
Is
that
your
really
idea,
then,
is
to
kind
of
ingest
these
open
source
projects
necessary
and
then
build
your
platform
from
those
open
source
projects
you're
ingesting,
so
you
can
offer
those
capabilities,
so
you
know,
for
instance,
if
someone
did
want
to
use
like
you
know,
you
know,
you
know
was
using
leucine.
For
example
right
you
know
there
there's,
there's
kind
of
ways
that
they
could
work
still
is
still
work
with
you
right,
because
you've
developed
the
platform
to
integrate
those
open
source
projects
that
make
them
available.
A
B
A
That
makes
sense,
and
so
just
in
conclusion
said
you
know
what
is
it
that
you
are
seeing
for
how
people
can
be
more
educated
about
open
source
software
licensing,
and
these
you
know
that
that
I
think
are
very
complicated
for
the
individual
right.
There's
these
cloud
services
and
they
offer
great
developer
experiences
right.
There's
no
doubt
about
that.
You
know,
but
those
cloud
services
also
then
have
like
been
ingesting
open
source
themselves
and
then
then
commoditizing
it
and
offering
it
as
features
as
you
say.
A
B
So
far
my
channel
has
been
Twitter
and
talking
here,
but
I
think
you're
seeing
things
and
they
they
get
a
name
at
certain
point
like
in
the
last
16
share
license,
wasn't
a
big
talk
about
it,
but
then,
when
Trillo
is
followed,
that's
now
called
non-compete
licenses
and
what
the
hyper
clouds
are
doing
is
its
service
wrapping
and
maybe
what
Amazon
is
doing
with
open
dis.
Robo
call
that
for
can
commoditize
I
found
Twitter
to
be
the
the
best
forum
and
is
probably
what
your
show
as
well.
Thank.
A
You
very
much
so
the
last
question
I
think
that,
just
on
the
news
that
we
have
coming
up
in
the
world,
there's
a
lot
of
news
about
f5
buying
nginx
any
thoughts
about
that
any.
What's
your
perspective
on
acquisition
like
that
and
you've
read
the
stories
you
you're
underst.
You
know
you,
you
know
f5.
Obviously
right
you
know
they
actually
have
a
spinoff
of
a
big
company
called
Aspen.
Mash
is
this
monster
than
you
sack,
but
you
know
they
they're.
A
They
have
always
been
considered
a
you
know,
a
a
company
that
was
really
you
who
you
went
to
for
load,
balancing
right.
You
know
and
I
think
Simon
Crosby
was
saying
on
Twitter
he's
saying:
oh
well,
you
know
now
they're
just
gonna
be
a
great
maintainer.
You
know
for
Amazon
Web
Services,
but
with
that
server
list
kind
of
discussion,
I'm,
that's
where
I
get
curious
like.
Where
does
that
play
into
like
a
couple
like
have
five
transforming
themselves?
And
so
it's
just
news
in
the
in
the
space.
B
A
B
As
the
way
to
do
that
on
the
data
plane
and-
and
it's
looking
right
now
at
SEO
for
for
the
for
the
control
plane,
I
do
think
it's
super
hard
to
kind
of
monetize
something
if
executives
in
companies
don't
care
about
you,
that's
why
we
have
this
buyer
based
open-source.
If
the
executives
are
almost
using
your
software
and
care
about
the
reports
that
come
out
of
it,
you
have
a
much
easier
time
selling
than
otherwise
so
I
can.
B
Nginx
was,
amazingly,
is
amazingly
popular,
like
two-thirds
of
the
top
ten
thousand
websites
use
it.
Despite
that,
I
think
it
doesn't
have
the
the
mind
share
with
executives
that
it
needs
to
have
so
I
think
biobased,
open
core
can
help
there
and
I.
Think
like
marketing
and
positioning
is,
is
essential
if
you're
gonna
compete
with
the
hyper
class
yeah.
A
For
sure
said,
thank
you
so
much,
it's
been
a
lot
of
fun.
Thank
you.
So
much
for
talking
today
and-
and
you
know,
your
discussions
and
your
clarity
on
on
these
topics
is,
is
very
welcome.
So
good
luck
with
you
know
with
the
keynote
today,
and
this
is
going
to
be
posting
afterwards,
but
there's
a
live
stream,
going
on
good
luck
with
that
and
and
and
have
fun,
and
we
look
forward
to
working
with
you
awesome
thanks.