[videolan infra guy here]

The whole idea of VideoLAN infrastructure migration from gitweb/trac/etc to gitlab and not to github was to use and promote free and open-source software.

Using closed-source software there is out of question, really.

Gitlab EE is actually open source. https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-ee

The GitLab EE source is publicly viewable, but its license is not open source. See https://about.gitlab.com/2015/05/22/gitlab-7-11-released/.

This is really a problem I think. Maybe GitLab could reconsider to adopt a licensing model[1] for the Enterprise Edition that would make it more Free Software friendly?

[1] I.e. a licensing model based on GPL and selling services that Red Hat uses for RHEL, instead of a licensing model like they, and a minority of the "open source" companies, use.

When we introduced the Enterprise Edition we had it under MIT license. This caused much confusion with our customers. Maybe the situation is better now with companies like Hortonworks educating the market. But unlike others we want to make our open source edition as simple to install and maintain as the paid version.

Anyway, maybe you could be a bit more specific about the problem you see with our model, I would love to get specific. Also see https://about.gitlab.com/about/#stewardship

BTW I presume RedHat choose a GPL license for RHEL because they didn't have a choice due to the GPL license on Linux.

My understanding from taking a Red Hat sysadmin course is that what you get from a RHEL subscription is firstly access to their repos from which to download updates and additional packages. The other, perhaps bigger, portion of a RHEL subscription is the support; I think they will answer the phone and provide you fixes for any bugs in RHEL-provided software relatively quickly. This is nice for companies, for whom uptime and stability are often superior to most other concerns, like staying close in feature parity to upstream.

We want to give people using GitLab CE an awesome upgrade experience too https://twitter.com/J_Salamin/status/687884326629937152 so limiting our packages server to just EE is not an option.

We tried charging only for support but now that we have the Omnibus packages it is rare for users to need support (and we like it that way).

If you need help on the difference between "publicly viewable" and "open source" see this answer to a related question on the Open Source Stack Exchange: http://opensource.stackexchange.com/questions/2338/can-i-use...

Note that the accepted answer there is wrong, as it ignores the fact that the question asker wanted to distribute virtual machines containing the software, which is a violation of the GPL. The currently second answer by h22 is correct.

In addition to the other commenters, the actual license can be found at https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-ee/blob/master/LICENSE

"This software and associated documentation files (the "Software") may only be used if you (and any entity that you represent) have agreed to, and are in compliance with, the GitLab Subscription Terms of Service, available at https://about.gitlab.com/terms/#subscription (the “EE Terms”), and otherwise have a valid GitLab Enterprise Edition subscription for the correct number of user seats."

Thanks a lot for the answer and the proposal. But we do not want to have anything critical that is not open source. We try to promote OpenSource, so using non-open-source software is hard to do.

1. Thanks, but see above :)

2. As I said, custom labels are way too limited, as people on the open-letter-to-github said, so I will comment on the issue.

3. Will do.

4. same as 1 :) But thanks a lot.

I will contact you :)

Thanks, I get that you don't want to be on proprietary code. I'm look forward to your email. And we're open to discussing open sourcing features if that is needed.

I don't know if that would apply to GitLab too, but maybe consider switching from the CE / EE model to just one "product" and a free for non-commercial model? Like e.g. http://3t.io/mongochef/download/ does it? I like that model way more than a feature-reduced version.

We considered that but we value having a completely open source version for all projects more. For more information about how we see the difference between CE and EE please see https://about.gitlab.com/about/#stewardship

What about having a single product, and charging for a proprietary license + support? This may work better with GPL as many large orgs are allergic to it.

With MIT license, many sites probably just implement the branding changes etc in the CE product on their own.

We want to give large orgs the option to run GitLab without having to pay us. We don't mind having people add features to CE, these are the same people that will send enahancements upstream and make GitLab better for everyone.

Have you ever considered using the AGPLv3 for the Community Edition, rather than the all-permissive MIT license?

I'm pretty sure they take outside contributions for CE, so if that was AGPL3 they wouldn't be able to use it in Gitlab EE, which sounds like shooting themselves in the foot.

They could require a CLA for outside contributions. Many organizations do that.

Instead of offering a free EE license I think the better thing to do is to open source features in EE that are deemed essential. So if you run a significant open source project and are considering switching to self hosted GitLab please let us know what EE features are blocking you (if any). This will allow us to open source them.

systse, I have nothing of value to add to this topic but as usual I want to thank you guys for the work you do. Gitlab may not be perfect but it's heartwarming to see an awesome open source project being supported like this and it's always really nice to see companies thrive on FOSS-first models.

Well, I can understand that having a business model which actually is stable and makes around FLOSS is hard, so I can tolerate a lot of wiggling around the edges of freedom. However, what I cannot tolerate is freedom of my data. Our IT guys are uneasy to installing supported version of GitLab internally (aside from the small question of money), because they are afraid that once we install EE version, we are locked into it. Is there a supported way how to get from EE to the true opensource version of GitLab and not to loose any data (aside from functionality not available in CE)?

Downgrading from EE to CE is officially supported. You can find the docs here: http://doc.gitlab.com/ee/downgrade_ee_to_ce/README.html

This is just amazing, you're awesome, thank you Gitlab team.

I'm still considering what to do with git.xiph.org and trac.xiph.org, and gitlab is one of the options. One thing I know for sure, just as with Videolan, a proprietary licensed solution like the EE is out of the question.

So thanks for the offer, but no thanks.

Makes sense, as said elsewhere, if there is an EE feature that is essential to you please let us know so we can consider open sourcing it.

Wanted to add that we'll put the custom landing page and logo in Community Edition based on the conversation in this HN post, see https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-ce/issues/11489

> If this is essential for you we'll give you a free lifetime license for GitLab EE.

While I get the sentiment, I don't think this helps. If you want to help the Open Source community, give us what we need in the form of open source. If I don't care about vendor lock-in I can go ahead and use GitHub. GitLab counts because its open source, and its open source version is the only thing the open source community should care about.

That makes sense and we want to make sure GitLab CE is a great solution for open source projects. If there is an EE feature that is would come up frequently in these conversations we would not hesitate to open source it.

this is probably not the right forum to express this on, but it's what's in front of me right now and it's topical, so here it goes:

I have seen the feature of being able to customize the login screen come up in discussions about gitlab come up so many times, in so many places, and I usually see it met with "EE feature" or a community member saying something like "gitlab is open source just change the files on your server".

This seems like such a basic thing for an open source software like gitlab to just provide out of the box, i can't believe it isn't listed under your " ... an EE feature that is would come up frequently in these conversations ... " that you "would not hesitate to open source". Especially since at least several of the people you're replying to in this thread have mentioned it specifically.

Is gitlab really making enough income from enterprises who decide that this is the killer feature that they need to pay for EE to get?

It seems like a simple matter of moving the gitlab branding on the login page to the footer with a "powered by gitlab" type of thing and a logo.

Please don't take my meaning as a hateful rant, I love gitlab and personally manage 2 seperate deployments of gitlab CE, but i am not ashamed of saying that this is something of a frusteration to me, and I have a hard time taking this

>If there is an EE feature that is would come up frequently in these conversations we would not hesitate to open source it

statement seriously in light of how many times I have seen this seemingly harmless feature shot down for essentially no real reason.

Makes sense, this was also requested by the VideoLAN people in https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=10923688

I've made https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab-ce/issues/11489 to discuss.

Our CTO and CRO gave their approval, we'll open source the branded login page.

It's great to see such a fast, and positive response. It's a whole league away from companies that don't even give any transparency or feedback! <3

You're very welcome.

I just want to echo hobarrera's comment and say wow, very well done. And Thanks! I'm always ready for another reason to love GitLab.

I'm seeing you post this a lot, which is great. I hope the people you are responding to are doing their part!