I have a hard time believing anything is the 'future' of version control if it doesn't have a free, public open-source plan. GitHub and BitBucket have huge amounts of inertia, and hence dominate in mindshare.
Github's workflow, features and terminology are focused on open source projects and those projects tend to work in a specific way. Kiln is focused on providing features that fit better inside a business environment. For example, the idea of a pull request is a bit foreign in a business environment. Internally, almost all the code written eventually gets shipped, so the social interaction around pull requests doesn't fit exactly right.
How is the "social interaction around pull requests" not just a synonym for "code review?"
Now, I recognize that much code written in a "business environment" does indeed ship without review. I just don't think that's a good thing.
If what you're saying is that you've yanked code review tools because customers don't want them, my only reply is that I'm afraid I'm unlikely to be a customer.
No, we have code reviews instead of pull requests, which as you point out is mostly terminology. But that terminology is indicative of assumptions that are baked into how the software operates. The assumptions and workflow of Kiln assumes you are using it inside of a business. I just gave one superficial example of a larger point I was trying to make about our intentions vs. people creating open source solutions and how that translates into defaults/workflows/usability of the software in different areas.
Give us some more examples, please. The pull requests vs. code reviews distinction is unconvincing.
I'd love to find a DVCS SaaS that provides better integration with the business software engineering workflow, and a UI that doesn't suck. So far I don't see a whole lot of that going on in kiln+fogbugz.
In my particular little enterprisey world, pull requests are something myself and some of the other bleeding-edge guys would like to work up for a workflow over a traditional branch and merge workflow. We think it's better for what we do. YMMV.
I read your blog-post and went "oh yeah - kiln. I wonder how they compare to BitBucket and GitHub. Let's look at the pricing page. Oh, the smallest plan is $25/mo. Guess I'll keep my one-person startup on BitBucket then."
If you want to compete with BitBucket and GitHub, you guys might want to feature the startup plan more prominently on your pricing page. The mention of it is so far below the fold that I didn't even see it on my tablet.
(If you are primarily focused on enterprise, that's cool too. I just feel like the mindshare for DVCS is trapped in the more community-centric players.)
