[{"data":1,"prerenderedAt":790},["ShallowReactive",2],{"/en-us/blog/how-start-ospo-ten-minutes-using-gitlab":3,"navigation-en-us":39,"banner-en-us":439,"footer-en-us":449,"blog-post-authors-en-us-Boris Baldassari":689,"blog-related-posts-en-us-how-start-ospo-ten-minutes-using-gitlab":703,"assessment-promotions-en-us":741,"next-steps-en-us":780},{"id":4,"title":5,"authorSlugs":6,"body":8,"categorySlug":9,"config":10,"content":14,"description":8,"extension":26,"isFeatured":12,"meta":27,"navigation":28,"path":29,"publishedDate":20,"seo":30,"stem":34,"tagSlugs":35,"__hash__":38},"blogPosts/en-us/blog/how-start-ospo-ten-minutes-using-gitlab.yml","How Start Ospo Ten Minutes Using Gitlab",[7],"boris-baldassari",null,"engineering",{"slug":11,"featured":12,"template":13},"how-start-ospo-ten-minutes-using-gitlab",false,"BlogPost",{"title":15,"description":16,"authors":17,"heroImage":19,"date":20,"body":21,"category":9,"tags":22},"Start an open source center of excellence in 10 minutes using GitLab","Launch your own open source program office using the OSPO Alliance's tools on GitLab",[18],"Boris Baldassari","https://res.cloudinary.com/about-gitlab-com/image/upload/v1749682593/Blog/Hero%20Images/opensign.jpg","2023-01-30","\nNow that open source has finally become a mainstream topic of conversation in the software industry, many organizations are increasingly curious about best practices for consuming, using, managing, and contributing to open source software projects. Open source software can seem alien and intimidating for organizations unfamiliar with it, and participating meaningfully and effectively in the open source ecosystem can be challenging.\n\nOrganizations especially serious about working in open source have formed [open source program offices](https://opensource.com/business/16/5/whats-open-source-program-office) (OSPOs) to spearhead their efforts. These offices are centers of excellence for an organization's ongoing work in open source. They help the organization realize the benefits of working with open source communities to accelerate innovation and build more secure tools.\n\nPerhaps your organization is considering establishing an OSPO. If it is, you likely have questions about how to get started – and especially about the best ways to help your organization become a valuable participant in the open source ecosystem.\n\nThe [OSPO Alliance](https://ospo.zone/) can help. Formed in 2021, the OSPO Alliance connects [experienced open source practitioners](https://ospo.zone/membership/) with organizations in need of seasoned guides to the open source world. Since the organization's founding, its members have composed a corpus of best open source practices called the [Good Governance Initiative Handbook](https://ospo.zone/ggi/), which explores various legal, cultural, and strategic considerations organizations face when working with open source software (and, naturally, the handbook itself is openly licensed, so anyone can contribute to it).\n\nTo celebrate the launch of the GGI Handbook Version 1.1, the OSPO Alliance went a step further: We have released the [MyGGI project](https://gitlab.ow2.org/ggi/my-ggi-board), which allows organizations to quickly create the infrastructure for their own open source program offices using GitLab.\n\nNow, let's look at what the MyGGI project can help your organization accomplish, including how to use the tool to establish an OSPO built on GGI principles — in only 10 minutes.\n\n## Working with the GGI Handbook\n\nThe GGI Handbook defines 25 activities, or best practices, organized according to various goals an organization may seek to accomplish with open source. Examples of activities include recommendations like \"Manage open source skills and resources,\" \"Manage software dependencies,\" \"Upstream first,\" or \"Engage with open source projects.\" Each of these activities, then, has a corresponding description and rationale, and the handbook provides resources, tools, and hints for successfully implementing them.\n\nActivites are intentionally generic and must be adapted to your organization's specific, unique, local context. The GGI Hanbook offers tools for doing this, too: scorecards. Scorecards allow you to assess your organization's engagement in and progress with various open source best practices.\n\nSo working with the GGI Handbook in your organization might look something like this:\n\n1. Evaluate the open source-related activities the handbook proposes and remove those that don't fit your specific context (maybe some activities will require a bit of adptation to be more relevant to the domain, while some others may just be discarded).\n1. Identify the activities that would be most beneficial to reaching your organization's goals in engaging with open source.\n1. Construct an Agile-like, iterative process for working on a small set of these activities. Do this in the form of sprints by tracking your progress with scorecards, and adapt the activity to your local context, team cultures, and available resources as you go.\n1. At the end of each iteration, review the activities your teams have completed, select a new scope for improvement, and repeat the process.\n\nThe MyGGI project provides a push-button infrastructure for doing this work. Next, let's examine how to deploy it on GitLab.\n\n### Deploying the GGI Handbook on GitLab\n\nThe OSPO Alliance wanted to provide a quick and straightforward way for organizations to establish their own open source program activities using a dashboard, so they can start implementing the GGI Handbook's methods without delay. We didn't want to reinvent the wheel with some heavy custom tooling. Instead, we decided to build the project using tools already available to us. We had already used GitLab issues to model activities during the early stages of handbook development, so reusing this GitLab feature made most sense. By simply adding some scripting to automate the initialization of activities and updating a static website on GitLab Pages, we were able to launch the project so others could easily deploy it in their own GitLab instances.\n\nInstructions for deploying the program are available in the project's [README](https://gitlab.ow2.org/ggi/my-ggi-board/-/blob/main/README.md). Let's review them here and start your own OSPO together.\n\nFirst, we need to create a new project on our GitLab instance. Select `Import project`, then `From repository by URL`.\n\nNext, we will need to provide a remote URL. Copy the existing MyGGI project by using the [URL](https://gitlab.com/gitlab-com/marketing/community-relations/open-source-program/gitlab-open-source-partners/publications-and-presentations/-/tree/main) `[https://gitlab.ow2.org/ggi/my-ggi-board.git](https://gitlab.ow2.org/ggi/my-ggi-board.git)`.\n\nThen we will give our project a unique name and choose a visibility level. Here's an example of how it might look:\n\n![Repository by URL](https://about.gitlab.com/images/blogimages/ospointenminutes/screenshot-1.png){: .shadow}\n\nWhen you have configured your desired settings, click `Create project` to continue.\n\nOur next step is to configure access privileges. Go to `Project Settings > Access Tokens` and create a `Project Access Token` with `API` privilege and `Maintainer` role. The project's scripts will use these to create the issues and generate the static website dashboard for your OSPO.\n\nWhen the token is created, copy it to a safe place, as **you will never be able to see it again**. Note that some GitLab instances prefer to disable the Project Access Token feature in favor of Personal Access Tokens. This is perfectly okay; the preference won't affect the deployment of this project (see the instructions for more details).\n\nHere's an example of what you will see at this stage:\n\n![Project access tokens](https://about.gitlab.com/images/blogimages/ospointenminutes/screenshot-2.png){: .shadow}\n\nWe will then provide this access token to the pipelines and scripts by creating a CI/CD environment variable. Go to `Project Settings` and then `CI/CD`. Scroll to the `Variables` section and add a new variable with name `GGI_GITLAB_TOKEN`. Input the access token you created in the last step as the value. Here's an example:\n\n![Add variable screen](https://about.gitlab.com/images/blogimages/ospointenminutes/screenshot-3.png){: .shadow}\n\nWe can now execute the pipeline to begin the process of creating your OSPO infrastructure. Go to `CI/CD`, then `Pipelines`, and click on `Run pipeline`. After a couple of minutes, the pipeline should finish and the website will deploy. You will see something like this when the pipeline finishes:\n\n![Pipeline passed screen](https://about.gitlab.com/images/blogimages/ospointenminutes/screenshot-4.png){: .shadow}\n\nInfrastructure for your open source program office is now ready!\n\n### Using the tools\n\nThe MyGGI project creates a set of 25 activities, along with a nice project board to help you visualize them:\n\n![Project board](https://about.gitlab.com/images/blogimages/ospointenminutes/screenshot-5.png){: .shadow}\n\nUsers can click on specific activities (rendered as issues) to read the description of the activity, understand the tools and resources that might help them complete it, and begin completing relevant scorecards. Users can also define their own perspectives on the activities, as they see them from the organization's specific context. Then they can create tasks to narrow the scope of each activity so they can iterate on it and track progress.\n\nTheir work is displayed on a static website hosted on GitLab Pages and updated nightly according to the organization's progress on various activities and tasks. This web page is especially useful to present the program and its day-to-day evolution to the organization (or the world); participants, stakeholders, and executives can review it to learn more about the various initiatives, see what work is underway, and track the overall development of the organization's open source program office. The initial website looks like this:\n\n![Welcome screen of website](https://about.gitlab.com/images/blogimages/ospointenminutes/screenshot-6.png){: .shadow}\n\n### Running your OSPO\n\nSelecting an open source program manager to oversee the work on the project boards is beneficial at this step. That person will:\n\n- Assign issues to team members to start working on new activities, create scorecards to track the work and associated tasks, and label them as \"In Progress\" instead of \"Not Started\".\n- Oversee the evolution of the work as it moves through various iterations, completing the scorecards with local resources and information, and closing issues as tasks are complete.\n- Ensure that issues keep making progress and, as team members complete them, assign new ones.\n\nAs changes occur in both the project and its issues, your OSPO's static website will regularly update to reflect the current status of activities, tasks, and the overall progress. After some time, for instance, the dashboard may look like this:\n\n![Dashboard with current status](https://about.gitlab.com/images/blogimages/ospointenminutes/screenshot-9.png){: .shadow}\n\nYou're now on your way to establishing your organization's open source program office. Don't hesitate to connect with the [OSPO Alliance](https://ospo.zone/) for help and support as you continue your journey!\n\n_Boris Baldassari is an open source consultant at the Eclipse Foundation Europe, and an active contributor to the OSPO Alliance._\n\nCover image by [Clay Banks](https://unsplash.com/@claybanks?utm_source=unsplash&utm_medium=referral&utm_content=creditCopyText) on [Unsplash](https://www.unsplash.com)\n\n\n",[23,24,25],"open 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statement",{"items":679},[680,683,686],{"text":681,"config":682},"Terms",{"href":509,"dataGaName":510,"dataGaLocation":457},{"text":684,"config":685},"Cookies",{"dataGaName":519,"dataGaLocation":457,"id":520,"isOneTrustButton":28},{"text":687,"config":688},"Privacy",{"href":514,"dataGaName":515,"dataGaLocation":457},[690],{"id":691,"title":18,"body":8,"config":692,"content":694,"description":8,"extension":26,"meta":698,"navigation":28,"path":699,"seo":700,"stem":701,"__hash__":702},"blogAuthors/en-us/blog/authors/boris-baldassari.yml",{"template":693},"BlogAuthor",{"name":18,"config":695},{"headshot":696,"ctfId":697},"","bbaldassari",{},"/en-us/blog/authors/boris-baldassari",{},"en-us/blog/authors/boris-baldassari","WFeJOv_PG80Jf0WJu681DY6PmaceH1pny-3LmfWe2Jw",[704,718,730],{"content":705,"config":716},{"title":706,"description":707,"authors":708,"heroImage":710,"date":711,"body":712,"category":9,"tags":713},"How to use GitLab Container Virtual Registry with Docker Hardened Images","Learn how to simplify container image management with this step-by-step guide.",[709],"Tim Rizzi","https://res.cloudinary.com/about-gitlab-com/image/upload/v1772111172/mwhgbjawn62kymfwrhle.png","2026-03-12","If you're a platform engineer, you've probably had this conversation:\n  \n*\"Security says we need to use hardened base images.\"*\n\n*\"Great, where do I configure credentials for yet another registry?\"*\n\n*\"Also, how do we make sure everyone actually uses them?\"*\n\nOr this one:\n\n*\"Why are our builds so slow?\"*\n\n*\"We're pulling the same 500MB image from Docker Hub in every single job.\"*\n\n*\"Can't we just cache these somewhere?\"*\n\nI've been working on [Container Virtual Registry](https://docs.gitlab.com/user/packages/virtual_registry/container/) at GitLab specifically to solve these problems. It's a pull-through cache that sits in front of your upstream registries — Docker Hub, dhi.io (Docker Hardened Images), MCR, and Quay — and gives your teams a single endpoint to pull from. Images get cached on the first pull. Subsequent pulls come from the cache. Your developers don't need to know or care which upstream a particular image came from.\n\nThis article shows you how to set up Container Virtual Registry, specifically with Docker Hardened Images in mind, since that's a combination that makes a lot of sense for teams concerned about security and not making their developers' lives harder.\n\n## What problem are we actually solving?\n\nThe Platform teams I usually talk to manage container images across three to five registries:\n\n* **Docker Hub** for most base images\n* **dhi.io** for Docker Hardened Images (security-conscious workloads)\n* **MCR** for .NET and Azure tooling\n* **Quay.io** for Red Hat ecosystem stuff\n* **Internal registries** for proprietary images\n\nEach one has its own:\n\n* Authentication mechanism\n* Network latency characteristics\n* Way of organizing image paths\n\nYour CI/CD configs end up littered with registry-specific logic. Credential management becomes a project unto itself. And every pipeline job pulls the same base images over the network, even though they haven't changed in weeks.\n\nContainer Virtual Registry consolidates this. One registry URL. One authentication flow (GitLab's). Cached images are served from GitLab's infrastructure rather than traversing the internet each time.\n\n## How it works\n\nThe model is straightforward:\n\n```text\nYour pipeline pulls:\n  gitlab.com/virtual_registries/container/1000016/python:3.13\n\nVirtual registry checks:\n  1. Do I have this cached? → Return it\n  2. No? → Fetch from upstream, cache it, return it\n\n```\n\nYou configure upstreams in priority order. When a pull request comes in, the virtual registry checks each upstream until it finds the image. The result gets cached for a configurable period (default 24 hours).\n\n```text\n┌─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐\n│                    CI/CD Pipeline                       │\n│                          │                              │\n│                          ▼                              │\n│   gitlab.com/virtual_registries/container/\u003Cid>/image   │\n└─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘\n                           │\n                           ▼\n┌─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┐\n│            Container Virtual Registry                   │\n│                                                         │\n│  Upstream 1: Docker Hub ────────────────┐               │\n│  Upstream 2: dhi.io (Hardened) ────────┐│               │\n│  Upstream 3: MCR ─────────────────────┐││               │\n│  Upstream 4: Quay.io ────────────────┐│││               │\n│                                      ││││               │\n│                    ┌─────────────────┴┴┴┴──┐            │\n│                    │        Cache          │            │\n│                    │  (manifests + layers) │            │\n│                    └───────────────────────┘            │\n└─────────────────────────────────────────────────────────┘\n```\n\n## Why this matters for Docker Hardened Images\n\n[Docker Hardened Images](https://docs.docker.com/dhi/) are great because of the minimal attack surface, near-zero CVEs, proper software bills of materials (SBOMs), and SLSA provenance. If you're evaluating base images for security-sensitive workloads, they should be on your list.\n\nBut adopting them creates the same operational friction as any new registry:\n\n* **Credential distribution**: You need to get Docker credentials to every system that pulls images from dhi.io.\n* **CI/CD changes**: Every pipeline needs to be updated to authenticate with dhi.io.\n* **Developer friction**: People need to remember to use the hardened variants.\n* **Visibility gap**: It's difficulat to tell if teams are actually using hardened images vs. regular ones.\n\nVirtual registry addresses each of these:\n\n**Single credential**: Teams authenticate to GitLab. The virtual registry handles upstream authentication. You configure Docker credentials once, at the registry level, and they apply to all pulls.\n\n**No CI/CD changes per-team**: Point pipelines at your virtual registry. Done. The upstream configuration is centralized.\n\n**Gradual adoption**: Since images get cached with their full path, you can see in the cache what's being pulled. If someone's pulling `library/python:3.11` instead of the hardened variant, you'll know.\n\n**Audit trail**: The cache shows you exactly which images are in active use. Useful for compliance, useful for understanding what your fleet actually depends on.\n\n## Setting it up\n\nHere's a real setup using the Python client from this demo project.\n\n### Create the virtual registry\n\n```python\nfrom virtual_registry_client import VirtualRegistryClient\n\nclient = VirtualRegistryClient()\n\nregistry = client.create_virtual_registry(\n    group_id=\"785414\",  # Your top-level group ID\n    name=\"platform-images\",\n    description=\"Cached container images for platform teams\"\n)\n\nprint(f\"Registry ID: {registry['id']}\")\n# You'll need this ID for the pull URL\n```\n\n### Add Docker Hub as an upstream\n\nFor official images like Alpine, Python, etc.:\n\n```python\ndocker_upstream = client.create_upstream(\n    registry_id=registry['id'],\n    url=\"https://registry-1.docker.io\",\n    name=\"Docker Hub\",\n    cache_validity_hours=24\n)\n```\n\n### Add Docker Hardened Images (dhi.io)\n\nDocker Hardened Images are hosted on `dhi.io`, a separate registry that requires authentication:\n\n```python\ndhi_upstream = client.create_upstream(\n    registry_id=registry['id'],\n    url=\"https://dhi.io\",\n    name=\"Docker Hardened Images\",\n    username=\"your-docker-username\",\n    password=\"your-docker-access-token\",\n    cache_validity_hours=24\n)\n```\n\n### Add other upstreams\n\n```python\n# MCR for .NET teams\nclient.create_upstream(\n    registry_id=registry['id'],\n    url=\"https://mcr.microsoft.com\",\n    name=\"Microsoft Container Registry\",\n    cache_validity_hours=48\n)\n\n# Quay for Red Hat stuff\nclient.create_upstream(\n    registry_id=registry['id'],\n    url=\"https://quay.io\",\n    name=\"Quay.io\",\n    cache_validity_hours=24\n)\n```\n\n### Update your CI/CD\n\nHere's a `.gitlab-ci.yml` that pulls through the virtual registry:\n\n```yaml\nvariables:\n  VIRTUAL_REGISTRY_ID: \u003Cyour_virtual_registry_ID>\n\n  \nbuild:\n  image: docker:24\n  services:\n    - docker:24-dind\n  before_script:\n    # Authenticate to GitLab (which handles upstream auth for you)\n    - echo \"${CI_JOB_TOKEN}\" | docker login -u gitlab-ci-token --password-stdin gitlab.com\n  script:\n    # All of these go through your single virtual registry\n    \n    # Official Docker Hub images (use library/ prefix)\n    - docker pull gitlab.com/virtual_registries/container/${VIRTUAL_REGISTRY_ID}/library/alpine:latest\n    \n    # Docker Hardened Images from dhi.io (no prefix needed)\n    - docker pull gitlab.com/virtual_registries/container/${VIRTUAL_REGISTRY_ID}/python:3.13\n    \n    # .NET from MCR\n    - docker pull gitlab.com/virtual_registries/container/${VIRTUAL_REGISTRY_ID}/dotnet/sdk:8.0\n```\n\n### Image path formats\n\nDifferent registries use different path conventions:\n\n| Registry | Pull URL Example |\n|----------|------------------|\n| Docker Hub (official) | `.../library/python:3.11-slim` |\n| Docker Hardened Images (dhi.io) | `.../python:3.13` |\n| MCR | `.../dotnet/sdk:8.0` |\n| Quay.io | `.../prometheus/prometheus:latest` |\n\n### Verify it's working\n\nAfter some pulls, check your cache:\n\n```python\nupstreams = client.list_registry_upstreams(registry['id'])\nfor upstream in upstreams:\n    entries = client.list_cache_entries(upstream['id'])\n    print(f\"{upstream['name']}: {len(entries)} cached entries\")\n\n```\n\n## What the numbers look like\n\nI ran tests pulling images through the virtual registry:\n\n| Metric | Without Cache | With Warm Cache |\n|--------|---------------|-----------------|\n| Pull time (Alpine) | 10.3s | 4.2s |\n| Pull time (Python 3.13 DHI) | 11.6s | ~4s |\n| Network roundtrips to upstream | Every pull | Cache misses only |\n\n\n\n\nThe first pull is the same speed (it has to fetch from upstream). Every pull after that, for the cache validity period, comes straight from GitLab's storage. No network hop to Docker Hub, dhi.io, MCR, or wherever the image lives.\n\nFor a team running hundreds of pipeline jobs per day, that's hours of cumulative build time saved.\n\n## Practical considerations\nHere are some considerations to keep in mind:\n\n### Cache validity\n\n24 hours is the default. For security-sensitive images where you want patches quickly, consider 12 hours or less:\n\n```python\nclient.create_upstream(\n    registry_id=registry['id'],\n    url=\"https://dhi.io\",\n    name=\"Docker Hardened Images\",\n    username=\"your-username\",\n    password=\"your-token\",\n    cache_validity_hours=12\n)\n```\n\nFor stable, infrequently-updated images (like specific version tags), longer validity is fine.\n\n### Upstream priority\n\nUpstreams are checked in order. If you have images with the same name on different registries, the first matching upstream wins.\n\n### Limits\n\n* Maximum of 20 virtual registries per group\n* Maximum of 20 upstreams per virtual registry\n\n## Configuration via UI\n\nYou can also configure virtual registries and upstreams directly from the GitLab UI—no API calls required. Navigate to your group's **Settings > Packages and registries > Virtual Registry** to:\n\n* Create and manage virtual registries\n* Add, edit, and reorder upstream registries\n* View and manage the cache\n* Monitor which images are being pulled\n\n## What's next\n\nWe're actively developing:\n\n* **Allow/deny lists**: Use regex to control which images can be pulled from specific upstreams.\n\nThis is beta software. It works, people are using it in production, but we're still iterating based on feedback.\n\n## Share your feedback\n\nIf you're a platform engineer dealing with container registry sprawl, I'd like to understand your setup:\n\n* How many upstream registries are you managing?\n* What's your biggest pain point with the current state?\n* Would something like this help, and if not, what's missing?\n\nPlease share your experiences in the [Container Virtual Registry feedback issue](https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab/-/work_items/589630).\n## Related resources\n- [New GitLab metrics and registry features help reduce CI/CD bottlenecks](https://about.gitlab.com/blog/new-gitlab-metrics-and-registry-features-help-reduce-ci-cd-bottlenecks/#container-virtual-registry)\n- [Container Virtual Registry documentation](https://docs.gitlab.com/user/packages/virtual_registry/container/)\n- [Container Virtual Registry API](https://docs.gitlab.com/api/container_virtual_registries/)",[24,714,715],"product","features",{"featured":12,"template":13,"slug":717},"using-gitlab-container-virtual-registry-with-docker-hardened-images",{"content":719,"config":728},{"title":720,"description":721,"authors":722,"heroImage":724,"date":725,"category":9,"tags":726,"body":727},"How IIT Bombay students are coding the future with GitLab","At GitLab, we often talk about how software accelerates innovation. But sometimes, you have to step away from the Zoom calls and stand in a crowded university hall to remember why we do this.",[723],"Nick Veenhof","https://res.cloudinary.com/about-gitlab-com/image/upload/v1750099013/Blog/Hero%20Images/Blog/Hero%20Images/blog-image-template-1800x945%20%2814%29_6VTUA8mUhOZNDaRVNPeKwl_1750099012960.png","2026-01-08",[261,611,23],"The GitLab team recently had the privilege of judging the **iHack Hackathon** at **IIT Bombay's E-Summit**. The energy was electric, the coffee was flowing, and the talent was undeniable. But what struck us most wasn't just the code — it was the sheer determination of students to solve real-world problems, often overcoming significant logistical and financial hurdles to simply be in the room.\n\n\nThrough our [GitLab for Education program](https://about.gitlab.com/solutions/education/), we aim to empower the next generation of developers with tools and opportunity. Here is a look at what the students built, and how they used GitLab to bridge the gap between idea and reality.\n\n## The challenge: Build faster, build securely\n\nThe premise for the GitLab track of the hackathon was simple: Don't just show us a product; show us how you built it. We wanted to see how students utilized GitLab's platform — from Issue Boards to CI/CD pipelines — to accelerate the development lifecycle.\n\nThe results were inspiring.\n\n## The winners\n\n### 1st place: Team Decode — Democratizing Scientific Research\n\n**Project:** FIRE (Fast Integrated Research Environment)\n\nTeam Decode took home the top prize with a solution that warms a developer's heart: a local-first, blazing-fast data processing tool built with [Rust](https://about.gitlab.com/blog/secure-rust-development-with-gitlab/) and Tauri. They identified a massive pain point for data science students: existing tools are fragmented, slow, and expensive.\n\nTheir solution, FIRE, allows researchers to visualize complex formats (like NetCDF) instantly. What impressed the judges most was their \"hacker\" ethos. They didn't just build a tool; they built it to be open and accessible.\n\n**How they used GitLab:** Since the team lived far apart, asynchronous communication was key. They utilized **GitLab Issue Boards** and **Milestones** to track progress and integrated their repo with Telegram to get real-time push notifications. As one team member noted, \"Coordinating all these technologies was really difficult, and what helped us was GitLab... the Issue Board really helped us track who was doing what.\"\n\n![Team Decode](https://res.cloudinary.com/about-gitlab-com/image/upload/v1767380253/epqazj1jc5c7zkgqun9h.jpg)\n\n### 2nd place: Team BichdeHueDost — Reuniting to Solve Payments\n\n**Project:** SemiPay (RFID Cashless Payment for Schools)\n\nThe team name, BichdeHueDost, translates to \"Friends who have been set apart.\" It's a fitting name for a group of friends who went to different colleges but reunited to build this project. They tackled a unique problem: handling cash in schools for young children. Their solution used RFID cards backed by a blockchain ledger to ensure secure, cashless transactions for students.\n\n**How they used GitLab:** They utilized [GitLab CI/CD](https://about.gitlab.com/topics/ci-cd/) to automate the build process for their Flutter application (APK), ensuring that every commit resulted in a testable artifact. This allowed them to iterate quickly despite the \"flaky\" nature of cross-platform mobile development.\n\n![Team BichdeHueDost](https://res.cloudinary.com/about-gitlab-com/image/upload/v1767380253/pkukrjgx2miukb6nrj5g.jpg)\n\n### 3rd place: Team ZenYukti — Agentic Repository Intelligence\n\n**Project:** RepoInsight AI (AI-powered, GitLab-native intelligence platform)\n\nTeam ZenYukti impressed us with a solution that tackles a universal developer pain point: understanding unfamiliar codebases. What stood out to the judges was the tool's practical approach to onboarding and code comprehension: RepoInsight-AI automatically generates documentation, visualizes repository structure, and even helps identify bugs, all while maintaining context about the entire codebase.\n\n**How they used GitLab:** The team built a comprehensive CI/CD pipeline that showcased GitLab's security and DevOps capabilities. They integrated [GitLab's Security Templates](https://gitlab.com/gitlab-org/gitlab/-/tree/master/lib/gitlab/ci/templates/Security) (SAST, Dependency Scanning, and Secret Detection), and utilized [GitLab Container Registry](https://docs.gitlab.com/user/packages/container_registry/) to manage their Docker images for backend and frontend components. They created an AI auto-review bot that runs on merge requests, demonstrating an \"agentic workflow\" where AI assists in the development process itself.\n\n![Team ZenYukti](https://res.cloudinary.com/about-gitlab-com/image/upload/v1767380253/ymlzqoruv5al1secatba.jpg)\n\n## Beyond the code: A lesson in inclusion\n\nWhile the code was impressive, the most powerful moment of the event happened away from the keyboard.\n\nDuring the feedback session, we learned about the journey Team ZenYukti took to get to Mumbai. They traveled over 24 hours, covering nearly 1,800 kilometers. Because flights were too expensive and trains were booked, they traveled in the \"General Coach,\" a non-reserved, severely overcrowded carriage.\n\nAs one student described it:\n\n*\"You cannot even imagine something like this... there are no seats... people sit on the top of the train. This is what we have endured.\"*\n\nThis hit home. [Diversity, Inclusion, and Belonging](https://handbook.gitlab.com/handbook/company/culture/inclusion/) are core values at GitLab. We realized that for these students, the barrier to entry wasn't intellect or skill, it was access.\n\nIn that moment, we decided to break that barrier. We committed to reimbursing the travel expenses for the participants who struggled to get there. It's a small step, but it underlines a massive truth: **talent is distributed equally, but opportunity is not.**\n\n![hackathon class together](https://res.cloudinary.com/about-gitlab-com/image/upload/v1767380252/o5aqmboquz8ehusxvgom.jpg)\n\n### The future is bright (and automated)\n\nWe also saw incredible potential in teams like Prometheus, who attempted to build an autonomous patch remediation tool (DevGuardian), and Team Arrakis, who built a voice-first job portal for blue-collar workers using [GitLab Duo](https://about.gitlab.com/gitlab-duo/) to troubleshoot their pipelines.\n\nTo all the students who participated: You are the future. Through [GitLab for Education](https://about.gitlab.com/solutions/education/), we are committed to providing you with the top-tier tools (like GitLab Ultimate) you need to learn, collaborate, and change the world — whether you are coding from a dorm room, a lab, or a train carriage. **Keep shipping.**\n\n> :bulb: Learn more about the [GitLab for Education program](https://about.gitlab.com/solutions/education/).\n",{"slug":729,"featured":12,"template":13},"how-iit-bombay-students-code-future-with-gitlab",{"content":731,"config":739},{"title":732,"description":733,"authors":734,"heroImage":735,"date":736,"category":9,"tags":737,"body":738},"Artois University elevates research and curriculum with GitLab Ultimate for Education","Artois University's CRIL leveraged the GitLab for Education program to gain free access to Ultimate, transforming advanced research and computer science curricula.",[723],"https://res.cloudinary.com/about-gitlab-com/image/upload/v1750099203/Blog/Hero%20Images/Blog/Hero%20Images/blog-image-template-1800x945%20%2820%29_2bJGC5ZP3WheoqzlLT05C5_1750099203484.png","2025-12-10",[611,261,714],"Leading academic institutions face a critical challenge: how to provide thousands of students and researchers with industry-standard, **full-featured DevSecOps tools** without compromising institutional control. Many start with basic version control, but the modern curriculum demands integrated capabilities for planning, security, and advanced CI/CD.\n\nThe **GitLab for Education program** is designed to solve this by providing access to **GitLab Ultimate** for qualifying institutions, allowing them to scale their operations and elevate their academic offerings. \n\nThis article showcases a powerful success story from the **Centre de Recherche en Informatique de Lens (CRIL)**, a joint laboratory of **Artois University** and CNRS in France. After years of relying solely on GitLab Community Edition (CE), the university's move to GitLab Ultimate through the GitLab for Education program immediately unlocked advanced capabilities, transforming their teaching, research, and contribution workflows virtually overnight. This story demonstrates why GitLab Ultimate is essential for institutions seeking to deliver advanced computer science and research curricula.\n\n## GitLab Ultimate unlocked: Managing scale and driving academic value\n\n**Artois University's** self-managed GitLab instance is a large-scale operation, supporting nearly **3,000 users** across approximately **19,000 projects**, primarily serving computer science students and researchers. While GitLab Community Edition was robust, the upgrade to GitLab Ultimate provided the sophisticated tooling necessary for managing this scale and facilitating advanced university-level work.\n\n***\"We can see the difference,\" says Daniel Le Berre, head of research at CRIL and the instance maintainer. \"It's a completely different product. Each week reveals new features that directly enhance our productivity and teaching.\"***\n\nThe institution joined the GitLab for Education program specifically because it covers both **instructional and non-commercial research use cases** and offers full access to Ultimate's features, removing significant cost barriers.\n\n### Key GitLab Ultimate benefits for students and researchers\n\n* **Advanced project management at scale:** Master's students now benefit from **GitLab Ultimate's project planning features**. This enables them to structure, track, and manage complex, long-term research projects using professional methodologies like portfolio management and advanced issue tracking that seamlessly roll up across their thousands of projects.\n\n* **Enhanced visibility:** Features like improved dashboards and code previews directly in Markdown files dramatically streamline tracking and documentation review, reducing administrative friction for both instructors and students managing large project loads.\n\n## Comprehensive curriculum: From concepts to continuous delivery\n\nGitLab Ultimate is deeply integrated into the computer science curriculum, moving students beyond simple `git` commands to practical **DevSecOps implementation**.\n\n* **Git fundamentals:** Students begin by visualizing concepts using open-source tools to master Git concepts.\n\n* **Full CI/CD implementation:** Students use GitLab CI for rigorous **Test-Driven Development (TDD)** in their software projects. They learn to build, test, and perform quality assurance using unit and integration testing pipelines—core competency made seamless by the integrated platform.\n\n* **DevSecOps for research and documentation:** The university teaches students that DevSecOps principles are vital for all collaborative work. Inspired by earlier work in Delft, students manage and produce critical research documentation (PDFs from Markdown files) using GitLab, incorporating quality checks like linters and spell checks directly in the CI pipeline. This ensures high-quality, reproducible research output.\n\n* **Future-proofing security skills:** The GitLab Ultimate platform immediately positions the institution to incorporate advanced DevSecOps features like SAST and DAST scanning as their research and development code projects grow, ensuring students are prepared for industry security standards.\n\n## Accelerating open source contributions with GitLab Duo\n\nAccess to the full GitLab platform, including our AI capabilities, has empowered students to make impactful contributions to the wider open source community faster than ever before.\n\nTwo Master's students recently completed direct contributions to the GitLab product, adding the **ORCID identifier** into user profiles. Working on GitLab.com, they leveraged **GitLab Duo's AI chat and code suggestions** to navigate the codebase efficiently.\n\n***\"This would not have been possible without GitLab Duo,\" Daniel Le Berre notes. \"The AI features helped students, who might have lacked deep codebase knowledge, deliver meaningful contributions in just two weeks.\"***\n\nThis demonstrates how providing students with cutting-edge tools **accelerates their learning and impact**, allowing them to translate classroom knowledge into real-world contributions immediately.\n\n## Empowering open research and institutional control\n\nThe stability of the self-managed instance at Artois University is key to its success. This model guarantees **institutional control and stability** — a critical factor for long-term research preservation.\n\nThe institution's expertise in this area was recently highlighted in a major 2024 study led by CRIL, titled: \"[Higher Education and Research Forges in France - Definition, uses, limitations encountered and needs analysis](https://hal.science/hal-04208924v4)\" ([Project on GitLab](https://gitlab.in2p3.fr/coso-college-codes-sources-et-logiciels/forges-esr-en)). The research found that the vast majority of public forges in French Higher Education and Research relied on **GitLab**. This finding underscores the consensus among academic leaders that self-hosted solutions are essential for **data control and longevity**, especially when compared to relying on external, commercial forges.\n\n## Unlock GitLab Ultimate for your institution today\n\nThe success story of **Artois University's CRIL** proves the transformative power of the GitLab for Education program. By providing **free access to GitLab Ultimate**, we enable large-scale institutions to:\n\n1.  **Deliver a modern, integrated DevSecOps curriculum.**\n\n2.  **Support advanced, collaborative research projects with Ultimate planning features.**\n\n3.  **Empower students to make AI-assisted open source contributions.**\n\n4.  **Maintain institutional control and data longevity.**\n\nIf your academic institution is ready to equip its students and researchers with the complete DevSecOps platform and its most advanced features, we invite you to join the program.\n\nThe program provides **free access to GitLab Ultimate** for qualifying instructional and non-commercial research use cases.\n\n**Apply now [online](https://about.gitlab.com/solutions/education/join/).**\n",{"slug":740,"featured":28,"template":13},"artois-university-elevates-curriculum-with-gitlab-ultimate-for-education",{"promotions":742},[743,757,768],{"id":744,"categories":745,"header":747,"text":748,"button":749,"image":754},"ai-modernization",[746],"ai-ml","Is AI achieving its promise at scale?","Quiz will take 5 minutes or less",{"text":750,"config":751},"Get your AI maturity score",{"href":752,"dataGaName":753,"dataGaLocation":243},"/assessments/ai-modernization-assessment/","modernization assessment",{"config":755},{"src":756},"https://res.cloudinary.com/about-gitlab-com/image/upload/v1772138786/qix0m7kwnd8x2fh1zq49.png",{"id":758,"categories":759,"header":760,"text":748,"button":761,"image":765},"devops-modernization",[714,557],"Are you just managing tools or shipping innovation?",{"text":762,"config":763},"Get your DevOps maturity score",{"href":764,"dataGaName":753,"dataGaLocation":243},"/assessments/devops-modernization-assessment/",{"config":766},{"src":767},"https://res.cloudinary.com/about-gitlab-com/image/upload/v1772138785/eg818fmakweyuznttgid.png",{"id":769,"categories":770,"header":772,"text":748,"button":773,"image":777},"security-modernization",[771],"security","Are you trading speed for security?",{"text":774,"config":775},"Get your security maturity score",{"href":776,"dataGaName":753,"dataGaLocation":243},"/assessments/security-modernization-assessment/",{"config":778},{"src":779},"https://res.cloudinary.com/about-gitlab-com/image/upload/v1772138786/p4pbqd9nnjejg5ds6mdk.png",{"header":781,"blurb":782,"button":783,"secondaryButton":788},"Start building faster today","See what your team can do with the intelligent orchestration platform for DevSecOps.\n",{"text":784,"config":785},"Get your free trial",{"href":786,"dataGaName":50,"dataGaLocation":787},"https://gitlab.com/-/trial_registrations/new?glm_content=default-saas-trial&glm_source=about.gitlab.com/","feature",{"text":495,"config":789},{"href":54,"dataGaName":55,"dataGaLocation":787},1773350812500]