Seems like free tier limitations does not apply to a public group as top namespace, that contains private subgroups and repositories. This would kind of help a lot!
GitLab team member here! User Limits will not apply to a public group as a top namespace and as at this time, no limit on private groups within a public top namespace group. See the 6th Q&A entry in the FAQ page (https://about.gitlab.com/pricing/faq-efficient-free-tier/#us...), excerpt here:
> Q. Do these changes apply to private projects within a top-level namespace with public visibility? A. User limits are currently applied based on the visibility of the top-level namespace. We will monitor how top-level namespaces with public visibility are using private projects to identify whether any limits on such projects are needed.
For the free tier of GitLab SaaS, user limits will apply only to top-level namespaces that are private. Public namespaces will not have user limits at this time.
Storage limits will apply to both private and public namespaces.
> Q. Do these changes apply to private projects within a top-level namespace with public visibility? A. User limits are currently applied based on the visibility of the top-level namespace. We will monitor how top-level namespaces with public visibility are using private projects to identify whether any limits on such projects are needed.