Version control platform GitLab plans to delete inactive repositories
Apparently, the company wants to save up to $1 million a year by deleting accounts that have not been changed for more than a year.
The platform for hosting repositories for software development GitLab is said to have concrete plans to automatically delete inactive repositories. This is reported by the news platform The Register, citing insiders who want to remain anonymous because they are not allowed to talk to the press about the plans.
According to the report, the operators of the version control platform want to automatically delete projects that have not been changed for a year. The starting signal for the clean-up work should probably already fall in September. Only projects in the free package are affected.
Potential savings in the millions
GitLab apparently expects the measure to save up to one million US dollars a year. The company probably wants to secure its financial situation in the long term.
Even if the deletion process should be automatic, GitLab wants to inform the project maintainers weeks or even months before the actual removal. The operators can keep them alive with a single commit or by creating a new issue.
Collateral damage for open source projects
Deleting projects that are not actively being developed can have far-reaching negative effects, as open source advocate Geoff Huntley points out in an interview with The Register: “Deleting all code means destroying the community. In doing so, they destroy the brand and the good Call.” It has always led to a big outcry in the community when in the past maintainers have deleted frequently used code of their own accord.
“People put their code there [auf einer Versionsverwaltungsplattform] off to make it available to the public to reuse and modify. Of course, there are no guarantees that code will always be available there, but the unwritten rules of open source are to contribute code, not remove it,” says Huntley.
Supply chain and forks
In fact, the plan could jeopardize the software supply chain of projects that use supposedly idle repositories. As it stands, the term inactive refers to the further development of the given repository, not its use in other projects.
The shot for GitLab could even backfire. A security measure would be to fork all dependencies as a precaution, which means that multiple copies of the same repository take up more memory than a supposedly unused one.
Another risk for GitLab is that it could lose projects to competitors like GitHub. At first glance, giving away free projects might not seem like a huge disadvantage, but the company emphasizes the value of free users in its pricing model document.
In the announcement about the plans, The Register writes that they have not yet received any comment from GitLab. Also voonze developer contacted GitLab and we will update the story when we get a statement from the company.
A spokesman for GitLab has now spoken to voonze Developer and indirectly confirmed the plans, even if there is no mention of automated deletion or a specific date:
“In accordance with our policies, GitLab reserves the right to delete inactive accounts, projects, namespaces, and associated content. Users will be notified in advance of such imminent deletion and provided with instructions on how to prevent their inactive accounts, projects , namespaces, and related content may be deleted. They may reactivate and maintain their accounts and projects by performing writing activities such as comments, commits, or merge requests prior to the date of an upcoming deletion. For more information, see the Data Retention section of the GitLab Privacy Policy. ”
