Original suggestion

As of now, build systems like TeamCity need to retrieve the sources via SSH and a private key infrastructure in order to be secure & do not use up an additional "service user" license for each project.

This has two major drawbacks:

• It forces us to manage the private key infrastructure (administrative overhead)
• It is not recommended to use SSH via automatic build tools according to the docs: https://confluence.atlassian.com/display/STASH/Enabling+SSH+access+to+Git+repositories+in+Stash

Furthermore, it forces us to enable SSH on Stash in the first place, this is not a huge drawback (due to the minimal configuration), however, still a security issue.

Optimally we would have:

• a default service user for each project
• enabling the "service users" feature costs only a single user license in total (regardless of how many projects provide service users)
• the service user can simply connect via HTTPS like all other Stash users

(see also https://answers.atlassian.com/questions/313156/stash-licensing-for-ci-build-systems for a discussion on the topic)