GitLab.com fans who are also GitHub fans have another six months to use the former for CI/CD while keeping their code in the Microsoft-owned platform.

The CI/CD firm launched GitLab CI/CD for GitHub a year ago, as well as offering integration with other repo platforms, and at the time offered users on its free and lower price tiers the chance to use its CI/CD while using GitHub for free for one year.

At the time, it said “A single CI/CD tool that can test and deliver software from multiple different code repositories allows enterprises to standardize and fully optimize their DevOps pipelines.” It also added, “After 2019-03-22 we plan to move the feature to be part of GitLab.com Silver.”

This week GitLab said “We decided to extend the deadline for using CI/CD for external repos, including CI/CD for GitHub”, until September 22 for its Free and Bronze users.

It listed a number of reasons, the first being, “We didn’t want to ruin anyone’s day by shutting off functionality without fair warning. We don’t currently have all of the instrumentation in place to give us confidence that we can appropriately notify users, so we’ll spend some time in the coming months to build this ability.”

At the same time, it said, the CI/CD market was changing, and “we’ve seen greater interest in using GitLab CI/CD with other git hosting options. Extending the timeline will allow more folks to test it out.”

And, it said, it wanted to get additional feedback from customers so it can improve the feature.

All of which sounds eminently sensible, though once you give people something for free, it gets harder to start charging for it in the longer term.

At the same time, some of the Twitterati wondered whether the move gives other vendors more time to get their own repo-CI/CD integration up to speed. They also pondered whether this all suggested the rush to GitLab – and other platforms – after Microsoft bought GitHub was not quite the torrent suggested at the time, albeit in terms too colourful to repeat here.