Users subscribed to GitLab’s free tier may soon see projects automatically deleted if they’ve been inactive for a year.
According The Registry (opens in new tab)people in the know have suggested that this new rule could be activated as early as September 2022, but there has been no official announcement yet.
It is expected that GitLab will prepare its non-paid users with sufficient notice, reminding that updating a comment, commit, or version only once will renew the project for another year.
Free GitLab accounts
The same article reveals that about a quarter of the company’s hosting costs are made up of free accounts, many of which are no longer in use. This is a move that could save GitLab about $1 million each year in hosting costs.
However, the change does not come without opposition, as open source advocate Geoff Huntley said The Registry:
“The source code doesn’t take up much disk space… For someone to delete all that code is a disaster for the community. They will destroy their brand and goodwill.”
He goes on to explain that many free users choose to host their code online, waiting for other people to use it, and therefore it will usually remain unchanged on the account holder’s end.
This will leave many users questioning GitLab’s free account, which comes with 5GB of storage, 10GB of data transfers, and 400 CI/CD minutes per month, along with five usernames with access to each namespace.
Despite widely promoting its free tier, GitLab sees it primarily as a recruiting tool that will see more users pay for its premium plans, in turn creating a more viable business model for the enterprise.
Via The Registry (opens in new tab)
