GitLab is preparing to auto-delete dormant projects from free accounts in what is being billed as a major cost-saving measure.
GitLab is a leading cloud-based development and code-sharing platform. According to The Register, the company plans to start removing dormant projects from free accounts to save on hosting costs.
According to the report, the auto-delete option could save the company up to $1 million a year. The Register’s sources indicated GitLab knows the potential minefield deleting projects could turn into and will give users weeks or months to save their work or move to paid accounts. Evidently, a single commit, comment, or issue within the previous 12 months is enough to keep a project “active.”
Needless to say, the news is already not going over well with those in the software development community.
“Source code does not take up much disk space,” Geoff Huntley, an open-source advocate, told The Register. “For someone to delete all that code is destruction of the community. They are going to destroy their brand and goodwill.”
“People host their code there because there is this idea it will be available to the general public to reuse and remix,” he added. “Of course there are no guarantees it will always be hosted there, but the unwritten rules in open source are that you make the code available and you don’t remove it.”
“We have had maintainers pull code and there has been huge community outrage about it,” he said,
Only time will tell if GitLab will go through with its plans, but the backlash should certainly give the company much to consider.