GitLab.com runs the proprietary GitLab Enterprise Edition (EE). This is mostly to allow us to performance test EE features at scale, for more context see https://about.gitlab.com/2014/06/27/gitlab-com-runs-ee/ You can use the open source GitLab Community Edition (CE) to start a SaaS similar to GitLab.com. We hope people will recognize that CE is not crippleware and will be OK with hosting their code on GitLab.com. If not there are alternatives based on CE such as https://modernrepo.com/

Yes I've read that context and it makes sense. I was just observing that some people would want an absolutely pure (ie 100% free software) option rather than critiquing what you offer.

That said I do hope you take steps to reassure people who want to be using an option which preserves their software freedom, for example that the CE will not be slowly deprecated, more features moving into EE.

I admit that making a fully credible commitment is challenging: options include multi-copyrightholder-copyleft which presumably you don't want at all as an MIT licensed project + some proprietary bits in EE, and a variation on the Fiduciary License Agreement used for Qt. But those two options are copyright-focused; there are probably other mechanisms to be thought of.

We try to reassure people by adding more features to the open source version every month. In fact, since we released the proprietary enterprise edition, the pace of development for the open source version has accelerated. We never moved any features from the open source version to the enterprise edition and plan to never do this (except in edge cases with overlapping functionality). We're happy with the current MIT license. We tried an MIT license for the enterprise edition before but that was very confusing to customers.

I've been running Gitlab CE for a few years on a linode instance for a couple of dozen repos and it's really quite excellent; performance is very good. You do need to keep up with the monthly upgrades to get the new features (there's an upgrade script).

Recently Gitlab CE has undergone some quite significant UI updates along with very noticeable performance improvements. Excellent work guys!

Signed: a very happy Gitlab CE user.

Glad to hear that!

If I read that uncharitably, (except...) looks like ample room to lead to the eventual demise of the open source offering.

But adding more features to the open source version every month is great. Hopefully that and a massive userbase sums to making it obvious that any substantial move towards deprecating the open source version will lead to a successful hostile fork, as there will be tons of people able and interested in doing that if necessary, resulting in you never making it necessary. :)

It is sad that enterprises are confused by freedom rather than demanding of it, but that's an issue for the software freedom movement to solve.

On another note, https://about.gitlab.com/better-than-github/ is a well done page. I wish you maximum success.

I think the only way to prove we're serious about open source is in our actions, licenses or statements don't help.

And yes, the huge community around GitLab will ensure a fork if we turn evil and start crippling the open source version.

Glad you like our comparison page with GitHub :)

This is the big key to open source. The proof is right there. The source is out there, so you can't turn that source evil, people can just take it and run with it around you if you try.