Clade open-source code on GitLab
Why we’re putting the Clade platform code on Gitlab?
There are two reasons for putting the Clade platform on Gitlab. The first is why we chose to open-source in the first place and the second is why chose gitlab.
Open Sourcing the Clade platform
From working as a developer, tester sometimes platform engineer I constantly use software and software libraries developed by an open-source community. At Clade we decided that without community support, we were going to find the idea of bringing Clade into the world a difficult challange. We’ve set our KickStarter to £1950, which if you’re working in a bank, is chump change. But what does this get the Clade team. It certainly won’t give us funding to quit our day jobs. What this funding provides us with, is the ability to run the platform for a 12–24 month basis, without fear of not being able to pay the external providers we need to run the service. And we also have a duty to provide the service to our KickStarter backers.
So why open-source, we have 3 unpaid and community members of the team and in order to maintain Clades platform, we will need to garner support from the dev community and KickStarter projects to support paying for this platform until we get enough subscriptions to build a stable and long lasting service.
The question of open-source, within Clade also comes with some nuance. Are we going to allow a potential competitor to just copy the code and run the service. Well the answer is No. In order to protect certain aspects of the project, we will withhold certain components. However this does not mean eventually the code will be made public. It means that as long as we’re profitable and stable, then there is no reason to open-source the whole kit and caboodle.
Why Gitlab?
We’ve chose their service for some great reasons. The first is they’re currently independent of Microsoft's gitlab. This is not to say, we don’t appreciate what this company do, it’s more related to supporting a service, which still allows competition to thrive.
Technically gitlab offers everything we need and we can run all of our technological base through the Gitlab service.