I'm gonna complain here because I see gitlab employees commenting.
It's a pretty bad look to claim that you offer a free version for individuals when there's not actually any way to get it from gitlab.com. Your only option is an email capture for a free trial of enterprise. Even the install docs redirect you to an email capture.
Of course there is a way to install enterprise for free, and it's full of nags and enterprise-only features that prompt you to upgrade.
You have to already know what CE means and you have to find it through a search engine. Even the install docs barely mention it. I got all the way through the install process and configuration before I realized I'd installed the enterprise version. I only found CE by searching for ways to hide the enterprise upgrade nags.
It's an extremely bad look, and people like me who care about privacy and open source are gonna be turned away. I explicitly decided against gitlab for this reason. I only came back because the other options are worse.
I get wanting to promote the paid offering, but completely burying the actually-free version and only offering an enterprise trial behind an email capture is pretty hostile. It's against the spirit of FOSS and I'm very disappointed.
I understand your perspective on this, and I’m certainly not saying it’s wrong. But there’s some background you should consider.
GitLab CE instructions used to be the default. Paying customers would find they installed GitLab CE by default and run it, and then want to use features. They’d have to install GitLab EE over it. Well if they’re a year or two behind in upgrades, that transition can be painful and require services.
This created alot of anger and frustration from enterprises who paid for GitLab or wanted to convert to paying for GitLab. The solution was simple; install GitLab EE by default per the instructions. Because FOSS folks will search out the free editions. Yet customers won’t; and they’ll get caught with the CE edition unable to migrate to EE.
The move wasn’t one built on bad faith to move people to paid versions; or somehow bury the CE versions. It was to reduce paid customer frustrations. Even now GitLab docs talk about running GitLab directly from source.
It's a pretty bad look to claim that you offer a free version for individuals when there's not actually any way to get it from gitlab.com. Your only option is an email capture for a free trial of enterprise. Even the install docs redirect you to an email capture.
Of course there is a way to install enterprise for free, and it's full of nags and enterprise-only features that prompt you to upgrade.
You have to already know what CE means and you have to find it through a search engine. Even the install docs barely mention it. I got all the way through the install process and configuration before I realized I'd installed the enterprise version. I only found CE by searching for ways to hide the enterprise upgrade nags.
It's an extremely bad look, and people like me who care about privacy and open source are gonna be turned away. I explicitly decided against gitlab for this reason. I only came back because the other options are worse.
I get wanting to promote the paid offering, but completely burying the actually-free version and only offering an enterprise trial behind an email capture is pretty hostile. It's against the spirit of FOSS and I'm very disappointed.