I'd argue otherwise, but have no source to support my claims. Maybe someone can help. Here's my 2 cents:
By being open source and allowing people to run it on their own servers, they can potentially convert a massive amount of people to their platform that otherwise wouldn't make the switch. Now the next time these people don't want to run gitlab on their own servers for whatever reason, they'll use their service. And pay for it. because they know the tools, the logic, the UI etc.
The reason I'm arguing for this is because that's exactly what's happening with me. I'm a very happy github user, but I might need to run something similar on my own servers. If I do, I'll host a gitlab. And then, for my other projects where i don't need to run my own instance, I'll probably just use their webplatform. Because it takes me less time to navigate it now that I've run it.
So i can see myself paying for gitlab some day because they've open sourced it and got me 'hooked' on their product as a result.
By being open source and allowing people to run it on their own servers, they can potentially convert a massive amount of people to their platform that otherwise wouldn't make the switch. Now the next time these people don't want to run gitlab on their own servers for whatever reason, they'll use their service. And pay for it. because they know the tools, the logic, the UI etc.
The reason I'm arguing for this is because that's exactly what's happening with me. I'm a very happy github user, but I might need to run something similar on my own servers. If I do, I'll host a gitlab. And then, for my other projects where i don't need to run my own instance, I'll probably just use their webplatform. Because it takes me less time to navigate it now that I've run it.
So i can see myself paying for gitlab some day because they've open sourced it and got me 'hooked' on their product as a result.