GitLab CE

Platform for Git repositories, code review, issues and CI/CD, community edition.

MITPermissiveOpen core

Building on it: what may you do?

Short answers based on the licence, for the version in the catalog.

  • B1 Change the code for internal use in your company Yes Yes. Keep the licence notices.
  • B2 Build your own product or service on top and offer it to customers as SaaS Yes Yes. You don't have to share your code.
  • B3 Make a closed-source derivative and sell or distribute it Yes Yes, even closed. The licence and copyright notices must ship with it.
  • B4 Use the project's name and trademark No No, not without permission. The licence covers the code, not the name or logo.

Keep in mind

  • Open core: parts of the project (often an ee/ or enterprise folder) are under a separate commercial licence and may not be changed or used freely.
  • Contributing back to the project requires signing a Contributor License Agreement (CLA).
  • There is a licence note for this product (e.g. parts under another licence or version-specific terms): read it and check the licence of the exact version you use.

This is guidance, not legal advice. Check with a lawyer before deciding.

The licence in brief

MIT License (MIT)

Permissive licence. You may use, modify and redistribute freely, including commercially. Keep the copyright and licence notice.

What does MIT mean?

Open core: ee/, jh/ is under a separate commercial licence. The rest of the code is MIT. Check which parts you use.

This is guidance, not legal advice (inte juridisk rådgivning). Check with a lawyer before deciding.

Facts

Licence
MIT
Licence type
Permissive
Open core
Yes – some features need a paid edition
GitHub stars
24.6k
Latest activity
Deployment
Docker
Login/SSO
SAML, OIDC, LDAP
API
Unknown
Multi-tenant
Unknown
EU vendor
Unknown
Source
GitHub API, fetched 2026-10-03

Licence analysis per use case

Sign in to see what the licence means for eight use cases – from internal self-hosting to offering the tool as a service.

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