Package Licensing

License

While GitLab itself is MIT, the omnibus-gitlab sources are licensed under the Apache-2.0.

License file location

Starting with version 8.11, the omnibus-gitlab package contains license information of all software that is bundled within the package.

After installing the package, licenses for each individual bundled library can be be found in /opt/gitlab/LICENSES directory.

There is also one LICENSE file which contains all licenses compiled together. This compiled license can be found in /opt/gitlab/LICENSE file.

Starting with version 9.2, the omnibus-gitlab package ships a dependency_licenses.json file containing version and license information of all bundled software, including software libraries, Ruby gems that the rails application uses, and JavaScript libraries that is required for the frontend components. This file, being in JSON format, is easily machine parseable and can be used for automated checks or validations. The file may be found at /opt/gitlab/dependency_licenses.json.

Starting with version 11.3, we have also made the license information available online, at: http://gitlab-org.gitlab.io/omnibus-gitlab/licenses.html

Checking licenses

The omnibus-gitlab package is made up of many pieces of software, comprising code that is covered by many different licenses. Those licenses are provided and compiled as stated above.

Starting with version 8.13, GitLab has placed an additional step into the omnibus-gitlab. The license_check step calls lib/gitlab/tasks/license_check.rake, which checks the compiled LICENSE file against the current list of approved and questionable licenses as denoted in the arrays at the top of the script. This script will output one of Good, Unknown or Check for each piece of software that is a part of the omnibus-gitlab package.

  • Good: denotes a license that is approved for all usage types, within GitLab and omnibus-gitlab.
  • Unknown: denotes a license that is not recognized in the list of ‘good’ or ‘bad’, which should be immediately reviewed for implications of use.
  • Check: denotes a license that has the potential be incompatible with GitLab itself, and thus should be checked for how it is used as a part of the omnibus-gitlab package to ensure compliance.

This list is currently sourced from the GitLab development documentation on licensing. However, due to the nature of the omnibus-gitlab package the licenses may not apply in the same way. Such as with git and rsync. See the GNU License FAQ