Re: [libreplanet-discuss] support me

[Mike Gerwitz]

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

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.

> 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?

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.

>> (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!

>> 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.

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)

> 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.

- -- 
Mike Gerwitz
Free Software Hacker | GNU Maintainer
http://mikegerwitz.com
FSF Member #5804 | GPG Key ID: 0x8EE30EAB
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