[licensing] Treat any case where we do not have a valid license as if no license is installed

[corneliusludmann]

Currently, an invalid license prevents any users to sign up. An installation with an invalid license should not be in a worse position than an installation with no license at all.

We have this behavior already to some extent so that we don't return an invalid license but a default license for some cases, e.g. here:

gitpod/components/licensor/ee/pkg/licensor/replicated.go

Lines 117 to 119 in 896fe39

	if lic.ValidUntil.Before(time.Now()) {
	return defaultReplicatedLicense()
	}

However, there are some cases where we don't have a valid license, e.g. when the license server from Replicated is not reachable etc.

I would propose to change the implementation like this:

• Don't return the default license in newReplicatedEvaluator() but return the invalid license with the proper reason/explanation why the license is invalid.
• In the function HasEnoughSeats, don't respond with false when the license is invalid but call HasEnoughSeats from the default license in that case (same for other methods like Enabled(...)).

That has the following advantages:

• We still have the proper (invalid) license in place and could e.g. log why the license is invalid.
• We could add a dashboard that shows the (invalid) license (see [licensing] Add a license page to the admin dashboard #8413) .
• No installation acts worse than the default license behavior.

[gtsiolis]

See also #3918 for historical context and in case we can close one of these two issues as duplicate. Cc @corneliusludmann @AlexTugarev

[corneliusludmann]

Thanks, @gtsiolis. I think the other issue is more about handling error messages. I added this to our project board since this is something that I had on my radar as well.

[mrsimonemms]

See #8593 (comment)