At GitLab we&#x27;ve been working with some volunteers at the FSF&#x2F;GNU Project to improve our score on the Ethical Repo Criteria Evaluation [1]. We&#x27;ve got an issue open about LibreJS [2] specifically, as well as another to fix the other issue preventing us from receiving a B grade. We&#x27;re also working on resolving some of the A grade criteria, albeit not all of them [3].<p>It&#x27;s disheartening to see the FSF demonized here, as I&#x27;ve been pleasantly surprised with the discussions I&#x27;ve had with most of their members. In the last HN thread about the Ethical Repo Evaluation, people called their requirements ridiculous. I agree with that for some of the A grade criteria, e.g. the GNU&#x2F;Linux requirement, but I think people are misunderstanding the purpose of the A grade, which is to signal that a site is &quot;sufficiently free&quot; and can be used to host the GNU Project&#x27;s source code. This is partly the fault of the FSF having poor communication, of course.<p>I&#x27;d like to highlight a comment by an FSF Volunteer regarding our work on some criteria for the A grade, &quot;Thanks for taking the time on this; I&#x27;m very encouraged, and I&#x27;m happy with any progress made. Again: since these criteria are for hosting of GNU projects, they&#x27;re a bit more strict and won&#x27;t be met by most services.&quot;<p>GitLab CE is licensed under the MIT Expat License, not the GPL, and yet they&#x27;re perfectly happy to work with us regardless. Outwardly they advocate for extreme ideas, but they&#x27;re also willing to compromise.<p>Apologies if this is rambly at all, or comes off as &quot;shilling&quot; in any way, I just wanted to share my story of interacting with the FSF. Hopefully I can convince some people that they&#x27;re not all living in caves yelling about how they&#x27;ll never use non-GPL software.<p>[1]: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.gnu.org&#x2F;software&#x2F;repo-criteria-evaluation.html" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.gnu.org&#x2F;software&#x2F;repo-criteria-evaluation.html</a><p>[2]: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;gitlab.com&#x2F;gitlab-org&#x2F;gitlab-ce&#x2F;issues&#x2F;15621" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;gitlab.com&#x2F;gitlab-org&#x2F;gitlab-ce&#x2F;issues&#x2F;15621</a><p>[3]: <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;gitlab.com&#x2F;gitlab-org&#x2F;gitlab-ce&#x2F;issues&#x2F;15678" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;gitlab.com&#x2F;gitlab-org&#x2F;gitlab-ce&#x2F;issues&#x2F;15678</a>