<story><title>Update on free software and telemetry</title><url>https://about.gitlab.com/blog/2019/10/10/update-free-software-and-telemetry/</url><text>We have launched important updates to our Terms of Service surrounding our use of telemetry services. Starting with GitLab 12.4, existing customers who use our proprietary products (that is, GitLab.com and the Enterprise Edition of our self-managed offerings) may notice additional Javascript snippets that will interact with GitLab and&amp;#x2F;or third-party SaaS telemetry service (such as Pendo).&lt;p&gt;For GitLab.com users:  as we roll out this update you will be prompted to accept our new Terms of Service. Until the new Terms are accepted access to the web interface and API will be blocked. So, for users who have integrations with our API this will cause a brief pause in service via our API until the terms have been accepted by signing in to the web interface.&lt;p&gt;For Self-managed users: GitLab Core will continue to be free software with no changes. If you want to install your own instance of GitLab without the proprietary software being introduced as a result of this change, GitLab Community Edition (CE) remains a great option. It is licensed under the MIT license (https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&amp;#x2F;wiki&amp;#x2F;MIT_License) and will contain no proprietary software. Many open source software projects use GitLab CE for their SCM and CI needs. Again, there will be no changes to GitLab CE.&lt;p&gt;Key Updates:&lt;p&gt;- GitLab.com (GitLab’s SaaS offering)and GitLab&amp;#x27;s proprietary Self-Managed packages (Starter, Premium, and Ultimate) will now include additional Javascript snippets (both open source and proprietary) that will interact with both GitLab and possibly third-party SaaS telemetry services (we will be using Pendo(https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.pendo.io)).&lt;p&gt;- We will disclose all such usage in our privacy policy, as well as what we are using the data for. We will also ensure that any third-party telemetry service we use will have data protection standards at least as strong as GitLab and we will aim for SOC2 compliance. Pendo is SOC2 compliant.&lt;p&gt;If you have any questions please contact us at support@gitlab.com</text></story><parent_chain><item><author>sytse</author><text>We made this blog post before implementing the changes so we could gather feedback. The feedback is very negative. And some of the things we thought would help (respecting DNT) don&amp;#x27;t seems to matter much. We&amp;#x27;ll have a look at all the feedback and see what we can learn and adjust.</text></item><item><author>kevin_b_er</author><text>This is beyond stupid for GitLab.&lt;p&gt;The _PAID_ self-hosted instances will have non-optional telemetry that loads remote javascript inside an enterprise?  Any enterprise that seriously wants to self-host will look at this statement and flip a table.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>finnthehuman</author><text>Why should I believe you care? I notice that you and your employees are here acting superficially nice to do damage control, but that&amp;#x27;s about it.&lt;p&gt;Of course the feedback is negative.  You obviously knew it would be because you made that blog post in the first place.  Three months from now you&amp;#x27;ll have made some cosmetic changes while still collecting basically all the data you wanted.  Eventually you&amp;#x27;ll be ramping up to roll this into your enterprise offering.  I&amp;#x27;ll do another round of source control tool research and hopefully be able to move gitlab to the NRND list in internal documentation.&lt;p&gt;That&amp;#x27;s how it will go, because that&amp;#x27;s how these things always play out. The world will keep spinning.</text></comment>
<story><title>Update on free software and telemetry</title><url>https://about.gitlab.com/blog/2019/10/10/update-free-software-and-telemetry/</url><text>We have launched important updates to our Terms of Service surrounding our use of telemetry services. Starting with GitLab 12.4, existing customers who use our proprietary products (that is, GitLab.com and the Enterprise Edition of our self-managed offerings) may notice additional Javascript snippets that will interact with GitLab and&amp;#x2F;or third-party SaaS telemetry service (such as Pendo).&lt;p&gt;For GitLab.com users:  as we roll out this update you will be prompted to accept our new Terms of Service. Until the new Terms are accepted access to the web interface and API will be blocked. So, for users who have integrations with our API this will cause a brief pause in service via our API until the terms have been accepted by signing in to the web interface.&lt;p&gt;For Self-managed users: GitLab Core will continue to be free software with no changes. If you want to install your own instance of GitLab without the proprietary software being introduced as a result of this change, GitLab Community Edition (CE) remains a great option. It is licensed under the MIT license (https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;en.wikipedia.org&amp;#x2F;wiki&amp;#x2F;MIT_License) and will contain no proprietary software. Many open source software projects use GitLab CE for their SCM and CI needs. Again, there will be no changes to GitLab CE.&lt;p&gt;Key Updates:&lt;p&gt;- GitLab.com (GitLab’s SaaS offering)and GitLab&amp;#x27;s proprietary Self-Managed packages (Starter, Premium, and Ultimate) will now include additional Javascript snippets (both open source and proprietary) that will interact with both GitLab and possibly third-party SaaS telemetry services (we will be using Pendo(https:&amp;#x2F;&amp;#x2F;www.pendo.io)).&lt;p&gt;- We will disclose all such usage in our privacy policy, as well as what we are using the data for. We will also ensure that any third-party telemetry service we use will have data protection standards at least as strong as GitLab and we will aim for SOC2 compliance. Pendo is SOC2 compliant.&lt;p&gt;If you have any questions please contact us at support@gitlab.com</text></story><parent_chain><item><author>sytse</author><text>We made this blog post before implementing the changes so we could gather feedback. The feedback is very negative. And some of the things we thought would help (respecting DNT) don&amp;#x27;t seems to matter much. We&amp;#x27;ll have a look at all the feedback and see what we can learn and adjust.</text></item><item><author>kevin_b_er</author><text>This is beyond stupid for GitLab.&lt;p&gt;The _PAID_ self-hosted instances will have non-optional telemetry that loads remote javascript inside an enterprise?  Any enterprise that seriously wants to self-host will look at this statement and flip a table.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>stunt</author><text>&amp;gt; We made this blog post before implementing the changes so we could gather feedback&lt;p&gt;Blog post isn’t the best way to collect feedback. Just ask your customers directly.&lt;p&gt;10 bad title on internet is enough to screw your reputation on 10m developers that probably don’t even follow up the story or even don’t bother to read anything beyond Reddit titles and comments. But then you have 10m developers telling their managers “Oh Gitlab isn’t good”.</text></comment>