Re: [libreplanet-discuss] support me

[Sytse Sijbrandij]

> Firstly---sorry for calling you Dmitriy.  My mind was somewhere else
> (definitely not the "To" field!) when I wrote that.

No problem at all.

> On Tue, Apr 14, 2015 at 10:59:33 -0700, Sytse Sijbrandij wrote:
>> We might have some javascript for Enterprise Edition specific
>> functionality that is not MIT licensed. If any, it would be trivial
>> code (most EE functions are ruby code) and we would be willing to MIT
>> license it by merging it into the Community Edition (although it will
>> be non-functional there).
>
> That would be great; thank you.  I'm okay with it being
> non-functional.  Even if trivial, it'd be ideal to freely license it,
> since that will encourage trust from your users that everything will
> continue to be freely licensed, and that "trivial" won't be defined too
> aggressively.

OK, to clarify, we're open to licensing all JS code under MIT, trivial
was a description of the kind of code, not a criteria.

>> We plan to make the source code of Enterprise Edition downloadable
>> soon (it will still be non-free software). At that time I would
>> appreciate someone checking if there is anything to merge into CE
>> since we are pretty time constrained. I can also give people access
>> right now if they are interested in checking this.
>
> "Anything to merge into CE" being the aforementioned JavaScript?

Yes

> If you have questions of whether such JS code is missing, I'd be more
> than happy to audit it for you.  Access to the source code might be
> useful if I have questions on whether something is conditional; I
> otherwise tie minified code back to the CE edition and assume anything I
> cannot find there is proprietary.
>
> Let me know what you had in mind.

Perfect, if you are comfortable with an account on GitLab.com I can
give you access today. Otherwise let me know and I can make it
available for download somewhere.

>>> (I am aware of the use of Google Analytics, which is proprietary; it can
>>> be easily disabled by their domain, so that is less of a concern.)
>>
>> GitLab CE also has support for Piwik
>
> GitLab.com uses GA, though, which is non-free, so users will have to
> block that with NoScript/LibreJS/etc.  Since that is on its own domain,
> it's trivial to do; having to block proprietary snippets mixed with
> GitLab's other JS would be a problem.
>
> Fortunately, it seems that we won't have a problem with that!

Cool

>>> Would you mind describing to us the current situation, and whether
>>> GitLab would be willing to make any guarantees to the community under
>>> (b)?  This would be useful information for the GNU project as well, as
>>> there have been discussions recently on the ethics of GitHub and the
>>> like.
>>
>> I would love to, but I have a hard time coming out with legally
>> binding language. We could also do a blog post to put us on record.
>> But what would we say? GitLab Community Edition will be awesome,
>> non-artificially restricted, free software until the end of time?
>
> I'm not sure we need anything legally binding.  What I'm referring to is
> GitLab.com itself---the software that is hosted there, and whether or
> not it contains proprietary JS.  If GitLab.com provides, for example,
> the source code for its client-side modifications in a public repository
> under a free license, that's the only legal assurance we need.

GitLab.com runs vanilla GitLab Enterprise Edition. So the source code
I'll give you access to and that we'll have available for public
inspection at a later point should be enough.

> Users will use GitLab if they agree with its direction and
> philosophy.  By doing the above, you are demonstrating a commitment
> toward software freedom.  We can only trust that you won't diverge from
> that, because GitLab would be going back on its word, which is risky
> - From a PR standpoint.
>
> (I'm also not sure what sort of legally binding text you could come up
> with for this sort of situation, unless you put it in a TOS and we could
> sue for damages, which I would not recommend that you do. heh)

You're free to judge us by our actions. I must admit that the comments
in response to our blog post accounting the Gitorious acquisition on
https://about.gitlab.com/2015/03/03/gitlab-acquires-gitorious/ (not
viable without javascript, attached as PDF) made me pretty skeptical
about worrying any PR impact too much. We'll try to do what we think
is right and your argument for needing MIT licensed javascript makes
sense.

>> I'm comfortable doing this out in the open.
>
> Thanks for your reply; I'm encouraged by it and I appreciate your
> commitment to free software.  GitLab is a much-needed project for the
> free software community.

We'll try to be a good participant in the community.

> - --
> Mike Gerwitz
> Free Software Hacker | GNU Maintainer
> http://mikegerwitz.com
> FSF Member #5804 | GPG Key ID: 0x8EE30EAB
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GitLab acquires Gitorious to bolster its on premises code collaboration platform _ GitLab.pdf
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