10 ms·

New GitHub Terms of Service

87 points by stock_toaster 10y ago

m0sa 10y ago
they really should've done this as a pull request...
- OJFord 10y ago
  Against what repository? There's no github/github.
  - Gaelan 10y ago
    Yes there is, but it's a private repo so we see a 404. Beside the point.
    - OJFord 10y ago
      Right, sorry, I meant to say 'public'. And I don't see that it is beside the point, because there's no other relevant and public repository that I can identify - no github/terms or whatever.
      - Gaelan 10y ago
        I was saying my own comment was beside the point.
Heliosmaster 10y ago
It's a bit ironic that GitHub proposes new Terms and conditions and there is not an easy way for the user to run a simple diff
- koolba 10y ago
  It says "DRAFT — NOT YET EFFECTIVE" so it's possible they'll have that when it's official.
  - drdaeman 10y ago
    Could've did it on a wip_newtos branch.
koolba 10y ago
> You may scrape the website for the following reasons: > Researchers may scrape public, non-personal information from GitHub for academic research purposes, only if any publications resulting from that research are open access. > Archivists may scrape GitHub for public data for archival purposes. > It is prohibited to scrape GitHub for spamming purposes, including for the purposes of selling GitHub users' personal information, such as to recruiters, headhunters, and job boards. How about a level of indirection? Alice the Archivist scrapes GitHub and compiles a compendium of names / emails. She then publishes this information in bulk for anybody who'd like to use. Alice's cousin Roger the Recruiter downloads the archive and does what he does best. Alice isn't selling anything, she's just providing the information bundled up. Roger isn't getting it from GitHub, he's getting it from the public feed (say via Bitorrent or a public data set posted somewhere).
- bryanrasmussen 10y ago
  what makes someone an archivist?
  - Algent 10y ago
    When you paid for winrar ? Joke aside: Working in a library I guess ?
  - libeclipse 10y ago
    Archiving github history. Like 4chan has archives of posts, same concept I think.
  - jdc0589 10y ago
    archive.org, etc...
    - noplay 10y ago
      Or software heritage
- Klathmon 10y ago
  I just don't think the whole "you can do X but only if you use the data in ways we want" is a good idea. It's completely unenforceable, and there are millions of loopholes like the one you just said that will let them skate around the restrictions both legally and in action. This seems like an addition because of the "GeekedIn leak"[0] of a bunch of scraped GitHub data from Nov of last year, but I just don't get what it's trying to do. Bad actors are just going to ignore it like normal (or find loopholes) and good actors weren't doing this in the first place. Personally, I wish they left out the "what you can do with the data" and focused their ToS only on the "how you are allowed to scrape it". Give solid limits on amounts and speeds and other various aspects of the scraping, make them restrictive enough to prevent a service like that from working, then provide a point of contact so that an "archivist" can be allowed to do more on a case-by-case basis. [0]https://www.troyhunt.com/8-million-github-profiles-were-leaked-from-geekedins-mongodb-heres-how-to-see-yours/ https://www.troyhunt.com/8-million-github-profiles-were-leak...
ggregoire 10y ago
I'm curious about this topic. How do you write such documents (ToS, Privacy Policy, etc)? If you release a side project or a startup and you can't afford a lawyer like GitHub probably does, what are the solutions?
- ProAm 10y ago
  If you cant afford a lawyer then you probably cant afford the side project. Some things you simply get what you pay for. Start an LLC, pay a lawyer a couple hundred bucks and you'll be set for quite a while.
  - johnnyfaehell 10y ago
    A side project doesn't have to be an LLC. Majority of most basic web services require some sort of Terms of Service but if you're only building it for fun paying a couple of hundred bucks for a lawyer to write up terms of service no one cares about doesn't seem cost effective.
    - ProAm 10y ago
      If you ever want to make 1$ on it, its worth having a lawyer make sure you won't lose your hat.
- mrkurt 10y ago
  There are a bunch of good legal doc services these days. For most company stuff, Clerky has some good docs (hiring people, hiring a contractor, etc). For ToS specifically, termsfeed.com is pretty good.
  - ggregoire 10y ago
    Thanks! I've seen several SaaS using iubenda.com for ToS and Privacy Policy. Do you have an opinion on this service?
- kodablah 10y ago
  Do what a lot of people do, find your favorites, cobble together your own and go from there. Of course a lawyer is best, but until you can pay for one and at least while things like privacy policies are important for SEO, fake it till you make it. Of course you should actually abide by your own policies. You can even search for common phrases[0] to see how many templates are out there. 0 - https://www.google.com/search?q="We+use+regular+Malware+Scanning" https://www.google.com/search?q="We+use+regular+Malware+Scan...
Flimm 10y ago
> Default Contributor License: To address growing confusion over licensing and contributions to others’ projects, we added a simple default contributor license. If it does not suit your needs, you may add your own Contributor License Agreement to your repository. That is much needed. Does anyone know what the new default contributor license is?
- chaosfox 10y ago
  I think its D.5., here: https://help.github.com/articles/github-terms-of-service-draft/#d-user-generated-content https://help.github.com/articles/github-terms-of-service-dra...
- driusan 10y ago
  "Additionally, unless there is a Contributor License Agreement to the contrary, whenever you make a contribution to a repository containing notice of a license, you license your contribution under the same terms, and agree that you have the right to license your contribution under those terms." It makes me so unreasonably happy to see that added to the terms of GitHub..
- sbuttgereit 10y ago
  Looks like, by default, it licenses the code to be viewable and useable by any third party, but only can be duplicated on GitHub itself. Actually, being able to use/perform would seem to contradict the duplication statement since you'd likely have to duplicate the code elsewhere than GitHub to view/perform it. Another issue is, what if I start under the default terms, someone clones the repo, and then I post it under, say, a GPL? Does that mean fork of the original is now perpetually under terms of the default license and can the fork be forked? Seems like you'd want to be very careful about allowing a default license like this to take effect... so much so that it raises a secondary issue... I'm not a lawyer but, I wonder if your terms of service can passively force a licensing agreement like this and still hold legal muster. We're talking about much more than simply licensing GitHub to display your code if you don't license it otherwise. Here GitHub is essentially causing you to enter into agreements with unrelated third parties on an opt out basis. Unless there are warnings about what you are about to do, seems like it could cause problems for both the licensor and licensee. Some say a default license is needed, but there is a default license position: which is you are not licensed to use the code unless granted permission to do. When I don't select a license, it seems more natural for GitHub to simply block forking and repo access to anyone other than the owner and allowing only the unlicensed code to be displayed per an agreement with GitHub. That only requires that the GitHub user and GitHub have an agreement rather than the GitHub user and an unrelated third party. Or explicitly force a license choice on repo creation: pick one or upload something. That too, would get past this without forcing a license which, to me at least, looks problematic.
LeonidBugaev 10y ago
I'm really curious if new "Scrapping" terms apply to API usage.
- justinclift 10y ago
  "Scraping" is when a person downloads a full HTML page. eg project repo page Using the GitHub API (as intended) wouldn't be scraping.
morbidhawk 10y ago
I'm in the process of moving all of my repositories hosted on GitHub to fossil scm instead. Unlike GitHub it is open source[1] and with a simple cgi script[2] I am able to host all of my repositories on my own web server. After knowing git, fossil wasn't very hard to learn and it comes with ticketing and wiki built-in and accessible via a web UI locally on any machine I'm using. One of the benefits in addition to being able to read fossil source code and being able change/style the web interface however I want is that I don't have to worry about staying up to date on Terms of Service changes I really have no say in. Edit: failed to mention fossil can import/export to/from a git repository[3] [1] 2-clause BSD license: https://www.fossil-scm.org/xfer/artifact/f99187d1905883d3 https://www.fossil-scm.org/xfer/artifact/f99187d1905883d3 [2] cgi script: http://fossil-scm.org/xfer/doc/trunk/www/server.wiki#cgi http://fossil-scm.org/xfer/doc/trunk/www/server.wiki#cgi [3] import/export git: http://fossil-scm.org/xfer/doc/trunk/www/inout.wiki http://fossil-scm.org/xfer/doc/trunk/www/inout.wiki
- Dangeranger 10y ago
  Have you considered using Gogs - Go git service https://gogs.io/ https://gogs.io/ Or Gitlab?
  - morbidhawk 10y ago
    I've tried GitLab before and wasn't too impressed. Gogs looks interesting, it looks like it might just be a single binary file like fossil which would be nice, all I had to do on windows is add the location of the single binary to the path and on linux I just had to move it to my bin folder and wham it works. I've been really happy with fossil so far so not looking to switch anytime soon, gogs certainly looks interesting
    - Dangeranger 10y ago
      Yes I believe Gogs is a single binary and fairly easy to deploy as a result. Gitlab is nice, but is a lot to setup and maintain unless you like that sort of thing, as I do.
    - 10y ago
joeyh 10y ago
Solely to allow us to provide the Service and to host the Content you upload to the Website without violating any rights you have in it, you grant GitHub and our successors a nonexclusive, worldwide, transferable, fully-paid and royalty-free license to use, reproduce, display, modify, adapt, distribute, and perform the Content in connection with rendering the Website and providing the Service. This appears to let Github take any software repository hosted there, and use it under this license to provide features to the github website. So they could take AGPL licensed software and modify and use it without complying with the source disclosure requirements of the AGPL because they have been provided this other more permissive license. It's essentially a free BSD license to everything on Github, for Github alone. Also, "the Service" is defined as any product or service Github provides, so this could be expanded into any business. The "transferable" in that also might let Gihub contract with some other company to provide part of "the Service" -- perhaps in an entirely unrelated business than the current Github website, and transfer the license to any free software they like to that other company. I don't know if it was intended to be used this way, and I am not a lawyer so I could be misinterpeting it, but I will not be hosting any software on Github if they adopt this TOS, without consulting a lawyer. (The current TOS has nothing like this in it.)
- eli 10y ago
  No. Like it says, the license is solely to allow the service to function and display what you have uploaded to it. Virtually every website that allows users uploads had a provision like this so that you cannot upload a copyrighted work and then turn around and sue them for infringement.
  - joeyh 10y ago
    Except Github is hosting software, and this license allows them to modify and use that software in any way they like, without complying with the software's normal license.
    - eli 10y ago
      Yes, even if your license says you have to quack like a duck when you view the source, if you intentionally upload it to github... they have a right to host on their servers it without quacking. This is not malicious. And is kind of obvious? Here's what bitbucket says: >Subject to the terms of this Agreement, you hereby grant to Atlassian a non-exclusive, worldwide, royalty-free right to (a) collect, use, copy, store, transmit, modify and create derivative works of Your Data, in each case solely to the extent necessary to provide the applicable Hosted Service to you and (b) for Hosted Services that enable you to share Your Data or interact with other people....
r3bl 10y ago
Section D, rule 7 seems like it could use some work: > GitHub employees do not access private repositories unless required to for security or maintenance, or for support reasons, with the consent of the repository owner. [...] If we have reason to believe the contents of a private repository are in violation of the law or of these Terms, we have the right to remove them. So, basically, GitHub says that there's a possibility for them to remove a private repo because of a hunch that it violates ToS, without actually looking at it to make sure?
- snowwrestler 10y ago
  It says "reason to believe" which means they will have evidence (the "reason"). You might need to sue them in order to see it, but that's usually how these things go. If they wanted to give themselves free reign to remove repos they would say something like "we have the right to remove private repos at any time, for any reason, at our sole discretion."
lucb1e 10y ago
I would assume Github, of all companies, would provide a git commit with a diff. Alas. Here is a diff: https://github.com/lgommans/terms-of-services/commit/32e5aef37853ae8f2aa054f33236051c13d84b58 https://github.com/lgommans/terms-of-services/commit/32e5aef...
- nsqe 10y ago
  We didn't provide a diff because the new Terms were not an iteration of the old Terms; they were written from scratch. As you can see from that diff, comparing the documents in diff form was just confusing, so we didn't try. We hope to provide future updates in PRs with a diff.
chad-autry 10y ago
The new license grant to others is nicely explicit on what permissions are granted on an unlicensed repo vs the old vague "you agree to allow others to view and fork your repositories." Note that you CANNOT legally edit your fork of an unlicensed repo. That would be violating the original repos copyright. https://help.github.com/articles/github-terms-of-service-draft/#5-license-grant-to-other-users https://help.github.com/articles/github-terms-of-service-dra...
mjw1007 10y ago
It's disappointing that they don't allow a user to have two accounts. I don't want to take my personal github credentials to work, and my employer doesn't use paid github services. The effect is that if when I'm at work I come across a bug in a project hosted on github, I probably won't report it.
cgtyoder 10y ago
Section K.3. is very problematic - it is (essentially) the same as the previous TOS. It states that github can restrict/delete your account for any reason, at any time, without warning. This may be fine for trivial projects, but if you're running a business and relying on github for actual revenue, this is completely unacceptable. I have asked people about this, and their answer has essentially been, Cross our fingers and pray it doesn't become a problem. I won't use github for anything remotely serious until this substantially changes.
- justinclift 10y ago
  What would be better wording?
  - shakna 10y ago
    A warning, and a appeal process, would remove much of the worry in this area, at least for the businesses I've worked with.
    - justinclift 10y ago
      That sounds sensible. Hopefully @nsqe is reading this and responds. :)
  - cgtyoder 10y ago
    A very limited and explicit list of what can cause account/content restrictions/deletions. We have to know what behaviors/content can trigger this, otherwise it's just groping around in the dark, which is an awful way to run a business.
- deleted 10y ago
  [deleted]

87 points by stock_toaster 10y ago

m0sa 10y ago

they really should've done this as a pull request...

OJFord 10y ago
Against what repository? There's no github/github.
- Gaelan 10y ago
  Yes there is, but it's a private repo so we see a 404. Beside the point.
  - OJFord 10y ago
    Right, sorry, I meant to say 'public'. And I don't see that it is beside the point, because there's no other relevant and public repository that I can identify - no github/terms or whatever.
    - Gaelan 10y ago
      I was saying my own comment was beside the point.

Heliosmaster 10y ago

It's a bit ironic that GitHub proposes new Terms and conditions and there is not an easy way for the user to run a simple diff

koolba 10y ago
It says "DRAFT — NOT YET EFFECTIVE" so it's possible they'll have that when it's official.
- drdaeman 10y ago
  Could've did it on a wip_newtos branch.

koolba 10y ago

> You may scrape the website for the following reasons: > Researchers may scrape public, non-personal information from GitHub for academic research purposes, only if any publications resulting from that research are open access. > Archivists may scrape GitHub for public data for archival purposes. > It is prohibited to scrape GitHub for spamming purposes, including for the purposes of selling GitHub users' personal information, such as to recruiters, headhunters, and job boards. How about a level of indirection? Alice the Archivist scrapes GitHub and compiles a compendium of names / emails. She then publishes this information in bulk for anybody who'd like to use. Alice's cousin Roger the Recruiter downloads the archive and does what he does best. Alice isn't selling anything, she's just providing the information bundled up. Roger isn't getting it from GitHub, he's getting it from the public feed (say via Bitorrent or a public data set posted somewhere).

bryanrasmussen 10y ago
what makes someone an archivist?
- Algent 10y ago
  When you paid for winrar ? Joke aside: Working in a library I guess ?
- libeclipse 10y ago
  Archiving github history. Like 4chan has archives of posts, same concept I think.
- jdc0589 10y ago
  archive.org, etc...
  - noplay 10y ago
    Or software heritage
Klathmon 10y ago
I just don't think the whole "you can do X but only if you use the data in ways we want" is a good idea. It's completely unenforceable, and there are millions of loopholes like the one you just said that will let them skate around the restrictions both legally and in action. This seems like an addition because of the "GeekedIn leak"[0] of a bunch of scraped GitHub data from Nov of last year, but I just don't get what it's trying to do. Bad actors are just going to ignore it like normal (or find loopholes) and good actors weren't doing this in the first place. Personally, I wish they left out the "what you can do with the data" and focused their ToS only on the "how you are allowed to scrape it". Give solid limits on amounts and speeds and other various aspects of the scraping, make them restrictive enough to prevent a service like that from working, then provide a point of contact so that an "archivist" can be allowed to do more on a case-by-case basis. [0]https://www.troyhunt.com/8-million-github-profiles-were-leaked-from-geekedins-mongodb-heres-how-to-see-yours/ https://www.troyhunt.com/8-million-github-profiles-were-leak...

ggregoire 10y ago

I'm curious about this topic. How do you write such documents (ToS, Privacy Policy, etc)? If you release a side project or a startup and you can't afford a lawyer like GitHub probably does, what are the solutions?

ProAm 10y ago
If you cant afford a lawyer then you probably cant afford the side project. Some things you simply get what you pay for. Start an LLC, pay a lawyer a couple hundred bucks and you'll be set for quite a while.
- johnnyfaehell 10y ago
  A side project doesn't have to be an LLC. Majority of most basic web services require some sort of Terms of Service but if you're only building it for fun paying a couple of hundred bucks for a lawyer to write up terms of service no one cares about doesn't seem cost effective.
  - ProAm 10y ago
    If you ever want to make 1$ on it, its worth having a lawyer make sure you won't lose your hat.
mrkurt 10y ago
There are a bunch of good legal doc services these days. For most company stuff, Clerky has some good docs (hiring people, hiring a contractor, etc). For ToS specifically, termsfeed.com is pretty good.
- ggregoire 10y ago
  Thanks! I've seen several SaaS using iubenda.com for ToS and Privacy Policy. Do you have an opinion on this service?
kodablah 10y ago
Do what a lot of people do, find your favorites, cobble together your own and go from there. Of course a lawyer is best, but until you can pay for one and at least while things like privacy policies are important for SEO, fake it till you make it. Of course you should actually abide by your own policies. You can even search for common phrases[0] to see how many templates are out there. 0 - https://www.google.com/search?q="We+use+regular+Malware+Scanning" https://www.google.com/search?q="We+use+regular+Malware+Scan...

Flimm 10y ago

> Default Contributor License: To address growing confusion over licensing and contributions to others’ projects, we added a simple default contributor license. If it does not suit your needs, you may add your own Contributor License Agreement to your repository. That is much needed. Does anyone know what the new default contributor license is?

chaosfox 10y ago
I think its D.5., here: https://help.github.com/articles/github-terms-of-service-draft/#d-user-generated-content https://help.github.com/articles/github-terms-of-service-dra...
driusan 10y ago
"Additionally, unless there is a Contributor License Agreement to the contrary, whenever you make a contribution to a repository containing notice of a license, you license your contribution under the same terms, and agree that you have the right to license your contribution under those terms." It makes me so unreasonably happy to see that added to the terms of GitHub..
sbuttgereit 10y ago
Looks like, by default, it licenses the code to be viewable and useable by any third party, but only can be duplicated on GitHub itself. Actually, being able to use/perform would seem to contradict the duplication statement since you'd likely have to duplicate the code elsewhere than GitHub to view/perform it. Another issue is, what if I start under the default terms, someone clones the repo, and then I post it under, say, a GPL? Does that mean fork of the original is now perpetually under terms of the default license and can the fork be forked? Seems like you'd want to be very careful about allowing a default license like this to take effect... so much so that it raises a secondary issue... I'm not a lawyer but, I wonder if your terms of service can passively force a licensing agreement like this and still hold legal muster. We're talking about much more than simply licensing GitHub to display your code if you don't license it otherwise. Here GitHub is essentially causing you to enter into agreements with unrelated third parties on an opt out basis. Unless there are warnings about what you are about to do, seems like it could cause problems for both the licensor and licensee. Some say a default license is needed, but there is a default license position: which is you are not licensed to use the code unless granted permission to do. When I don't select a license, it seems more natural for GitHub to simply block forking and repo access to anyone other than the owner and allowing only the unlicensed code to be displayed per an agreement with GitHub. That only requires that the GitHub user and GitHub have an agreement rather than the GitHub user and an unrelated third party. Or explicitly force a license choice on repo creation: pick one or upload something. That too, would get past this without forcing a license which, to me at least, looks problematic.

LeonidBugaev 10y ago

I'm really curious if new "Scrapping" terms apply to API usage.

justinclift 10y ago
"Scraping" is when a person downloads a full HTML page. eg project repo page Using the GitHub API (as intended) wouldn't be scraping.

morbidhawk 10y ago

I'm in the process of moving all of my repositories hosted on GitHub to fossil scm instead. Unlike GitHub it is open source[1] and with a simple cgi script[2] I am able to host all of my repositories on my own web server. After knowing git, fossil wasn't very hard to learn and it comes with ticketing and wiki built-in and accessible via a web UI locally on any machine I'm using. One of the benefits in addition to being able to read fossil source code and being able change/style the web interface however I want is that I don't have to worry about staying up to date on Terms of Service changes I really have no say in. Edit: failed to mention fossil can import/export to/from a git repository[3] [1] 2-clause BSD license: https://www.fossil-scm.org/xfer/artifact/f99187d1905883d3 https://www.fossil-scm.org/xfer/artifact/f99187d1905883d3 [2] cgi script: http://fossil-scm.org/xfer/doc/trunk/www/server.wiki#cgi http://fossil-scm.org/xfer/doc/trunk/www/server.wiki#cgi [3] import/export git: http://fossil-scm.org/xfer/doc/trunk/www/inout.wiki http://fossil-scm.org/xfer/doc/trunk/www/inout.wiki

Dangeranger 10y ago
Have you considered using Gogs - Go git service https://gogs.io/ https://gogs.io/ Or Gitlab?
- morbidhawk 10y ago
  I've tried GitLab before and wasn't too impressed. Gogs looks interesting, it looks like it might just be a single binary file like fossil which would be nice, all I had to do on windows is add the location of the single binary to the path and on linux I just had to move it to my bin folder and wham it works. I've been really happy with fossil so far so not looking to switch anytime soon, gogs certainly looks interesting
  - Dangeranger 10y ago
    Yes I believe Gogs is a single binary and fairly easy to deploy as a result. Gitlab is nice, but is a lot to setup and maintain unless you like that sort of thing, as I do.
  - 10y ago

joeyh 10y ago

Solely to allow us to provide the Service and to host the Content you upload to the Website without violating any rights you have in it, you grant GitHub and our successors a nonexclusive, worldwide, transferable, fully-paid and royalty-free license to use, reproduce, display, modify, adapt, distribute, and perform the Content in connection with rendering the Website and providing the Service. This appears to let Github take any software repository hosted there, and use it under this license to provide features to the github website. So they could take AGPL licensed software and modify and use it without complying with the source disclosure requirements of the AGPL because they have been provided this other more permissive license. It's essentially a free BSD license to everything on Github, for Github alone. Also, "the Service" is defined as any product or service Github provides, so this could be expanded into any business. The "transferable" in that also might let Gihub contract with some other company to provide part of "the Service" -- perhaps in an entirely unrelated business than the current Github website, and transfer the license to any free software they like to that other company. I don't know if it was intended to be used this way, and I am not a lawyer so I could be misinterpeting it, but I will not be hosting any software on Github if they adopt this TOS, without consulting a lawyer. (The current TOS has nothing like this in it.)

eli 10y ago
No. Like it says, the license is solely to allow the service to function and display what you have uploaded to it. Virtually every website that allows users uploads had a provision like this so that you cannot upload a copyrighted work and then turn around and sue them for infringement.
- joeyh 10y ago
  Except Github is hosting software, and this license allows them to modify and use that software in any way they like, without complying with the software's normal license.
  - eli 10y ago
    Yes, even if your license says you have to quack like a duck when you view the source, if you intentionally upload it to github... they have a right to host on their servers it without quacking. This is not malicious. And is kind of obvious? Here's what bitbucket says: >Subject to the terms of this Agreement, you hereby grant to Atlassian a non-exclusive, worldwide, royalty-free right to (a) collect, use, copy, store, transmit, modify and create derivative works of Your Data, in each case solely to the extent necessary to provide the applicable Hosted Service to you and (b) for Hosted Services that enable you to share Your Data or interact with other people....

r3bl 10y ago

Section D, rule 7 seems like it could use some work: > GitHub employees do not access private repositories unless required to for security or maintenance, or for support reasons, with the consent of the repository owner. [...] If we have reason to believe the contents of a private repository are in violation of the law or of these Terms, we have the right to remove them. So, basically, GitHub says that there's a possibility for them to remove a private repo because of a hunch that it violates ToS, without actually looking at it to make sure?

snowwrestler 10y ago
It says "reason to believe" which means they will have evidence (the "reason"). You might need to sue them in order to see it, but that's usually how these things go. If they wanted to give themselves free reign to remove repos they would say something like "we have the right to remove private repos at any time, for any reason, at our sole discretion."

lucb1e 10y ago

I would assume Github, of all companies, would provide a git commit with a diff. Alas. Here is a diff: https://github.com/lgommans/terms-of-services/commit/32e5aef37853ae8f2aa054f33236051c13d84b58 https://github.com/lgommans/terms-of-services/commit/32e5aef...

nsqe 10y ago
We didn't provide a diff because the new Terms were not an iteration of the old Terms; they were written from scratch. As you can see from that diff, comparing the documents in diff form was just confusing, so we didn't try. We hope to provide future updates in PRs with a diff.

chad-autry 10y ago

The new license grant to others is nicely explicit on what permissions are granted on an unlicensed repo vs the old vague "you agree to allow others to view and fork your repositories." Note that you CANNOT legally edit your fork of an unlicensed repo. That would be violating the original repos copyright. https://help.github.com/articles/github-terms-of-service-draft/#5-license-grant-to-other-users https://help.github.com/articles/github-terms-of-service-dra...

mjw1007 10y ago

It's disappointing that they don't allow a user to have two accounts. I don't want to take my personal github credentials to work, and my employer doesn't use paid github services. The effect is that if when I'm at work I come across a bug in a project hosted on github, I probably won't report it.

cgtyoder 10y ago

Section K.3. is very problematic - it is (essentially) the same as the previous TOS. It states that github can restrict/delete your account for any reason, at any time, without warning. This may be fine for trivial projects, but if you're running a business and relying on github for actual revenue, this is completely unacceptable. I have asked people about this, and their answer has essentially been, Cross our fingers and pray it doesn't become a problem. I won't use github for anything remotely serious until this substantially changes.

justinclift 10y ago
What would be better wording?
- shakna 10y ago
  A warning, and a appeal process, would remove much of the worry in this area, at least for the businesses I've worked with.
  - justinclift 10y ago
    That sounds sensible. Hopefully @nsqe is reading this and responds. :)
- cgtyoder 10y ago
  A very limited and explicit list of what can cause account/content restrictions/deletions. We have to know what behaviors/content can trigger this, otherwise it's just groping around in the dark, which is an awful way to run a business.
deleted 10y ago
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