Re: [Repo-criteria-discuss] Rough Draft of Announcement (Task 2)

[Andrew Ferguson]

Hello everyone,

Firstly, thanks to everyone reading this from the FSF / volunteer organizers for LibrePlanet last weekend - I wasn't able to come in person but I live streamed a fair bit and really enjoyed it. Mike: I really enjoyed your session, it gave me some very interesting thoughts. Zak: I didn't manage to see yours (my Internet connection dropped out for about 3 hours), but I'll look forward to watching it when the videos are made available. I hope the protest against DRM in HTML went well.

From Zak's idea for a quote from GitLab to be included in the evaluation announcement, a few days ago I emailed Sytse (CEO of GitLab) with a request for some comments to a few questions that I felt would give answers suitable for inclusion in the announcement. He got back to me tonight, and I have attached his email in full so that we can decide the most suitable parts to be added.

I also thought it may be a good idea to include a quote from Savannah (I believe the only other repository to pass the evaluation?). I haven't done this yet though, as I'm not sure who to email. (The maintainers of Savannah? Someone else at the FSF?). Does anyone here know?

Andrew

Hi Andrew,

Please find my answers inline. Please let me know if there are any
questions. Please keep marketing@ in the cc.

Dear Sytse,

As you may be aware, over the past few months a team of volunteers at the Free Software Foundation have been working on the GNU Ethical Repository Criteria. This is a criteria that rates code hosting repositories such as GitLab on their commitment to the right of their users, in areas such as free software, accessibility, and privacy.

Although the criteria itself was released in 2015, at that time no repositories were graded, as work was still being finalised on the content of the criteria itself.

More recently, several of the more popular code hosting repository services - including GitLab - have been evaluated according to the criteria. This evaluation is to be published soon, and upon publication an announcement will be released by the FSF providing information about the released evaluation.

There has been ongoing discussion regarding the content of the announcement on the GNU repo-criteria-discuss mailing list and one recent suggestion by Zak Rogoff (Campaigns Manager for FSF) was that a quote from GitLab (likely through you) would be a good addition to the announcement, due to GitLab's continued commitment to the free software community.

Thanks for considering us!

I understand that you will be very busy maintaining and updating GitLab, but if you had the time I would really appreciate it if you would be able to provide a few answers to the questions below, in a style that would be suitable for quoting for the announcement. (I would also ask that the FSF's preferred terminology (e.g: 'free software' rather than 'open source') be used so the announcement can be published on the FSF's website).

Sure

Thank you and kind regards,
Andrew Ferguson


Why is it important for a Free Software version of GitLab to be available (the community edition), rather than just providing a proprietary version?

We want to allow everyone to contribute to software. We recognize that
many people have a need for free software to do this. The reasons vary
from ethical to practical considerations. But as a former developer
myself I think it is natural that you can contribute to the software
you use to collaborate. That is why GitLab CE is very important to us.

Why is it important that GitLab passes the ethical repository criteria?

We want the people that follow the FSF guidance to be able to use
GitLab too so that everyone can contribute.

What advice would you give to other code hosting repositories that have not passed the criteria and / or do not view it as something important?

We try to stay focussed on GitLab and live by our values
https://about.gitlab.com/handbook/#values What others do is up to
them.

Why are the issues raised in the criteria important and / or relevant today for users of code repository services?

The FSF carefully considered the criteria to allow people to use code
repository services in a way that is compatible with their values, if
you share those values these criteria are a great guideline.

Any other comments you have about GitLab and the ethical repository criteria?

We know our open core business model means that we have to maintain a
fine balance between having a proprietary version and our stewardship
of GitLab Community Edition
https://about.gitlab.com/about/#stewardship We're always open to
feedback on what we can do better.

Best regards,
Sytse 'Sid' Sijbrandij
CEO GitLab Inc.