It is run as a standalone hosted application on a dedicated server (or in a private cloud) to manage multiple repositories within an organization.

Developers willing to contribute need to sign the Contributor License Agreement (CLA), before their changes are merged into RhodeCode's main codebase.

[4] RhodeCode was created in 2010 by Marcin Kuźmiński[5] to satisfy his need for a more efficient and secure way to manage source code across Mercurial, Git and SVN repositories behind a firewall in large organisations.

Because RhodeCode had accepted patches from independent developers, contributed under the GPL license, there was a dispute about whether the company had the legal rights to make such change.

[8] According to Bradley M. Kuhn of Software Freedom Conservancy, the exception statement is ambiguous and "leaves the redistributor feeling unclear about their rights".

[10] Instead of pursuing litigation, which might take years, SFC decided to fork the project under the name Kallithea, replacing the non-free files with free ones.