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@strypey GitLab is not fully-free, it's freemium / open-core whatever you want to call it. The fully-free community edition is completely usable as is, but there's many valuable features they retain as only "shared source" proprietary.

Unrelated, here's another reference article: https://wiki.snowdrift.coop/market-research/history/software

@wolftune true, and these are the kinds of nuances I'm gathering the list to write about. But for me the key point is:
> The fully-free community edition is completely usable as is

I've also seen them move functions from the EE to the CE after being asked to in Hacker News threads, so they seem pretty genuine about serving the free code community as well as keeping the lights on. My suspicion is that EE users get to play with all the new toys first, but eventually everything migrates into CE.

@strypey Your impression is half-right, half-wrong. I've had conversations with the CEO, been involved in negotiations on these things…

GitLab is sincere about caring about free software and being transparent etc. They want to not sell out (though they did take VC investment).

While some features go from EE to CE, the list of EE features has *grown* not shrunk, and there's no pattern of consistently moving EE features to CE eventually. They may move others, or they may further distinguish…