This program is free software: you can redistribute it and/or modify it under the terms of the GNU Affero General Public License as published by the Free Software Foundation, either version 3 of the License, or (at your option) any later version. This program is distributed in the hope that it will be useful, but WITHOUT ANY WARRANTY; without even the implied warranty of MERCHANTABILITY or FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE. See the GNU Affero General Public License for more details. You should have received a copy of the GNU Affero General Public License along with this program. If not, see . */ ?> Please do not use Gitorious!

Please do not use Gitorious or GitLab!

Please do not use Gitorious or GitLab to host . is a free software project, so this is only a request, and not a restriction on the software.

Don't use github, either.

What's wrong with Gitorious?

  • They have completely sold us out to a company whose main business model is proprietary software.
  • Gitorious is now owned by GitLab. GitLab is essentially the same as GitHub; there is a free (libre) version of GitLab, but this is bait-and-switch for their so-called enterprise version which is proprietary software.
  • The GitLab site itself also runs on a proprietary version of GitLab. GitLab has the same rotten attitude as GitHub when it comes to free software.
  • GitLab is permissively licensed, which means that it completely lacks copyleft. Anyone (including the main GitLab upstream) can re-release a proprietary version and completely refuse to give out source code.
  • GitLab CEO Sytse Sijbrandij has the same attitude as the github CEO, regarding GPL, quote "We're very happy with the MIT since it has the least amount of restrictions for everyone. But we respect your opinion and hope you will consider contributing to GitLab in the future." -- the statement was made by him in response to a question asking about copyleft in GitLab, and more specifically about AGPL (which the gitorious software was released under).

Gitorious now simply uses Free Software for its own benefit, releasing source code under a free license only when suited to it's business goals; they are quite happy to violate the rights of their users, for profit (since they are now part of GitLab, which has been doing so for quite some time).

The old gitorious website was however run by fully AGPL licensed software, which you could self-host. This page is anti-gitorious-company. Gitorious (software) will most likely be forked.

By contrast, the project adheres strictly to the goals of the Free Software movement, which seeks to eliminate proprietary software to the point where all software is free.

The proprietary developments in GitLab are unacceptable to the project. Users and developers of free software are strongly advised not to use GitLab or Gitorious, for any of their projects.

Where should I host and share my code?

Here are a few examples:

  • Host your own repositories. This is exactly what libreboot does, hosted on a machine that is running libreboot! You can use a frontend like gitweb for easy viewing by others. For code review, you can use an IRC channel, mailing lists and other methods that allow mass collaboration.
  • Jason Self lists a few replacements on this page: http://jxself.org/goodbye-gitorious.shtml

Jason Self also posted his own article here: http://jxself.org/goodbye-gitorious.shtml

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