New GitHub Terms of Service are in effect

Earlier this month, we gave you a preview of our Terms of Service update, and we asked for feedback from our community. You responded overwhelmingly! Thank you so much, everyone who sent us feedback. We heard you, and we have edited the Terms accordingly. The new Terms of Service are now effective!

Your feedback

We received nearly 100 comments on our proposed Terms of Service changes. A few clear themes emerged:

• Positive feedback: Nearly a third of our feedback was very complimentary. Thank you for taking the time to let us know how much you liked the changes.
• Fixed typos: About a tenth of the comments were from users spotting typos. Thanks, we fixed those! (Oops!)
• Refined license grant: We got a good bit of feedback about our license grant section. We certainly understand your concerns, and we’ve reworded it to narrow the grant and to explain exactly why we’re using what we’re asking for.
• License agreement for contributors: We also got some feedback about the license under which you contribute to others’ repositories. We split that into its own section and clarified the language in it.

Several users asked us to provide a diff of the new Terms compared with the old Terms. We weren’t able to, because we wrote the new Terms from the ground up; they were not an iteration of the old Terms. However, we are happy to provide a diff between the February 7 draft and the final draft. Please take a look at the changes you inspired!

The new Terms of Service

Of course, the things you liked about our new Terms are still there. You’ll still find:

• Plain English terms: The Terms are still easy to read, with a table of contents for easy navigation, as well as a short summary of each section so you know what you’re getting.
• Acceptable Use policy: Our Acceptable Use policy is much easier to read than it was before, and if you want clarification on how we approach that policy, please see our GitHub Community Guidelines.
• GitHub Pages terms: We’ve got understandable, clear terms for GitHub Pages.
• Advertising on GitHub: Advertising is not prohibited on GitHub, but it is heavily scrutinized because we don’t want to become a spam haven. Our Terms now describe the kind of advertising that GitHub allows.

What this means to you

The new Terms of Service are in effect as of today, February 28. You can accept them by clicking the broadcast announcement on your dashboard or by continuing to use GitHub. Again, thank you so much to our user community! You’ve helped us make our Terms better. Please let us know if you have any questions about the new Terms, or if we can help you going forward.

Written by

Hannah Poteat

@nsqe