This is odd to me because Certbot and Boulder, the projects I have the most connection with for my job, both have paid contributors, in each case paid by 501(c)(3) non-profit organizations (EFF and ISRG)¹. Both are free software projects with "standard open source licenses" and neither project ever charges fees to any user, although Certbot displays messages soliciting optional donations to the non-profits in question.
Is this really what the author of the definition intended?
¹ Also, three for-profit companies have "seconded" developers or documentation writers to Certbot at various points and at least one other one was planning to and then didn't go through with it.
... also, no project that takes advantage of this offer can participate in GSOC because then it would have a paid developer?
It could be what they intended. It's a good way to be sure they only provide free services to projects that would never be paying customers. If an organization can pay someone to work on an open-source project, they could also pay Gitlab to provide services to that project.
That's a very good point. Maybe "noncommercial" here is in fact meant to capture something like "lacking in financial resources" rather than literally "noncommercial".
The definition was made by 1password and we reused that. We do want to extend this offer to Certbot and Boulder. You can reference this HN comment to make sure your application gets excepted. And because we owe a lot to Let's Encrypt we'll also trow in the support for free if you need it.
I don't know if these specific projects plan to switch to GitLab, but I appreciate your offer very much, and if the topic comes up I'll certainly pass it along.
I was just thinking of this situation as an example of an uncertainty in the current definition of "noncommercial", rather than a practical problem that we faced immediately.
But again, thanks for chiming in and thanks for the offer.
Is this really what the author of the definition intended?
¹ Also, three for-profit companies have "seconded" developers or documentation writers to Certbot at various points and at least one other one was planning to and then didn't go through with it.
... also, no project that takes advantage of this offer can participate in GSOC because then it would have a paid developer?