Skip to content

Permit individual subscriptions

Seth Berger requested to merge sethgitlab-individualsubscriptions into master

Why is this change being made?

A prohibition on individual licenses was added to the handbook without any explanation or discussion. The prohibition severely impacts many team member's ability to do their job efficiently and get the tools they need. It goes against several of the GitLab values.

This MR reverts most of that change.

  • The MR leaves Apple Music as it assumes that Apple Music is deemed an inappropriate business expense.
  • It removes Krisp from the prohibited list since this is a proven tool at GitLab and no corporate license exists for it.
  • This MR also states the company wont reimburse for personal licenses if the business is already paying for licenses through a corporate purchasing.

Individual licenses should be reimbursable for the following reasons:

  1. They are an incredibly efficient way to procure software. Team members can get the tools they need within minutes. The added overhead of corporate procurement is inefficient for individual software licenses. GitLab should be purchasing a significant amount of software from a single vendor before a corporate license is needed and the procurement process kicks in.

  2. Individual licenses support our value of iteration. They allow team members to quickly experiment with new tools that they need to do their job. Team members can evaluate tools with very low overhead and cost to the organization. It allows team members to evangelize a productivity tool to fellow team members. This will show an organic need for the the tool prior to GitLab committing to a potentially wasteful corporate license.

  3. Our value of Results should drive team members decisions on individual licenses. Team members are forced to think about whether they are using a software package when they purchase it, expense it and renew it. This is more likely for team members to cancel unused products than if they have a corporate license and are distanced from the cost.

Author Checklist

  • Provided a concise title for the MR
  • Added a description to this MR explaining the reasons for the proposed change, per say-why-not-just-what
  • Assign this change to the correct DRI
    • If the DRI for the page/s being updated isn’t immediately clear, then assign it to one of the people listed in the "Maintained by" section in on the page being edited.
    • If your manager does not have merge rights, please ask someone to merge it AFTER it has been approved by your manager in #mr-buddies.
    • If the changes relate to any part of the project other than updates to content and/or data files please make sure to ping @gl-static-site-editor in a comment for a review and merge. For example changes to .gitlab-ci.yml, JavaScript/CSS/Ruby code or the layout files. (this requirement has been removed pending identification of a new DRI for the handbook)
Edited by Seth Berger

Merge request reports