University of Surrey GitLab – of Service

The following of use governs the use of the service “gitlab.surrey.ac.uk” (hereinafter referred to as “GitLab”) operated by the IT Services department at the University of Surrey. The purpose of the service is the secure and versioned storage and management of software code developed in the context of research and teaching.

The of use listed here must be accepted by users before using the service when logging into GitLab. Once the of Use has been confirmed in GitLab, no further confirmation is required unless the of Use change. If you wish to view the of Use in GitLab again, they can be viewed here.

In case of violation of these of use, we reserve the right to block individual projects and accounts.

Contents of the projects

Our GitLab instance is used to manage software projects in the context of research, teaching, and administration. We have been granted a licence for GitLab Ultimate under the GitLab for Education Program Agreement. Which is intended exclusively for use in the context of teaching or for open-source licensed projects without the intention of making a profit as per the agreement here.

If your project does not fit these definitions, it should not be stored on this service.

The GitLab instance is backed up via a nightly backup. However, this backup is only used for a possible recovery of the entire system in case of failure and not for the recovery of individual user data (repositories). This backup contains a database dump and configurations necessary to restore the GitLab instances as a whole system. It is not possible to restore individual deleted repositories. For this reason, users are responsible for backing up their repository data (payload data).

Rights and duties of the project owners

The project owners take over the administration of members, as well as the configuration within their GitLab projects. The accounts of GitLab users are personal and may not be passed on. Thus, the respective users assume full responsibility for their personal account and must keep the access information carefully and confidentially. In addition, project owners assume responsibility for the content of their projects. In particular, when using GitLab, the project owner is responsible for ensuring that GitLab's licence are adhered to.

Users are required to provide a primary email address in the account. This e-mail address must be accessible and should be checked regularly. Important information is transmitted to this e-mail address.

User Lifecycle

Loss of university affiliation

Users with student or employee status at University of Surrey receive an account on the instance with permission to create personal GitLab projects and group projects. Users who log in with an external account will only receive permission to contribute to existing projects, to which they must be invited. Since external users cannot create their own projects, no licence is required for these users. They are marked as so-called external users.

If a GitLab user loses their student or employee status, they are no longer authorised to continue using GitLab and to use a licence. In this case, the user is blocked in GitLab and can no longer access their projects.

If you are leaving the University, you should think about re-assigning ownership of any projects you want to hand over to colleagues or peers before your departure. Likewise, if you are a supervisor, you should think about asking anyone departing the University to transfer project ownership before their departure.

Inactivity

If a GitLab user has neither logged in nor modified a project (commit, push) for 12 months, this user is considered inactive.

In this case, users who have not used GitLab for 12 months will be de-activated (free-ing up one seat/licence) and informed by email. The account will be re-activated upon next login.

Rights and duties of the project participants

The accounts of the project participants are personal and may not be passed on. Thus, the project participants take full responsibility for their personal account and the careful storage of the access information. External Project participants can only contribute to existing projects after being added by a project owner, but cannot create their own projects.

Quotas and limits

A quota of 5 GB is granted per project by default and a limit of 50 personal projects per user. In justified exceptional cases, these limits can be increased. To do this, an e-mail must be sent to itservicedesk@surrey.ac.uk and the additional requirement must be justified. If the quota is exceeded, an automated e-mail notification is sent to the project owner with a request to reduce the amount of data. If this request is not complied with and no request for additional use is made, we reserve the right to block the project.

Costs

The use of GitLab is free of charge; there is no legal claim to registration and use.