2020: It has been an amazing ride but all journeys come to an end. Joining the Google family will allow us to offer our customers much better experience while retaining our independence. We are developers at heart and this is why we want to give developers the source control tools they deserve!
Independence: since we took financing we need to have a liquidity event; to maintain independence we want to become a public company rather than be acquired.
At any rate, even if it happens, GitLab CE is open source, which can't be said for some of their competition.
From what I can tell 5 out of 7 board seats are owned by VCs and it's very unlikely the founders retain majority shares given their 5 rounds of funding. So I doubt it's their call to make in any way.
I can promise you they are already in talks with at least one large company. You know those phones started ringing when Microsoft bought Github. I'm not ready to believe that Goldman Sachs is now a principles over profit kind of company.
If one takes GitLab's communication entirely at face value, one might consider there is some kind of 'principled' thing going on here, but I suggest that 'it's just a business' and that GitLab isn't some shiny example of much, other than a well run entity.
All of the 'everyone can do this' language in their communications, is just that, communications, it has a cognitive resonance with words such as 'equality' which appeal to some (well, all of us in a way) - but it's marketing.
The are what they are because it works for those involved, and also makes them money. Many boring business without fancy communications provide immense surpluses to the world.
Which means Gitlab would likely cease to exist as a standalone product but rather be integrated into GCP or the like (similar to Gemnasium and Gitorious after Gitlab acquired them)
