Adam Frankel
General Counsel · Technology & AI
15+ years as General Counsel to technology, cloud & AI companies
4. GitHub Acceptable Use Policies
DDONALD-HOBDYUpdated 17 Oct 2025
This document outlines the Acceptable Use Policies for GitHub, detailing restrictions on content and conduct related to user safety, intellectual property, privacy, and authenticity. It serves to ensure a collaborative and safe environment for all users by prohibiting unlawful, harmful, or disruptive activities on the platform.
GitHub Acceptable Use Policies
In this article
1. Compliance with Laws and Regulations
3. Intellectual Property, Authenticity, and Private Information
4. Spam and Inauthentic Activity on GitHub
7. Information Usage Restrictions
Short version: We host a wide variety of collaborative projects from all over the world, and that collaboration only works when our users are able to work together in good faith. While using the Service, you must comply with our Acceptable Use Policies, which include some restrictions on content and conduct on GitHub related to user safety, intellectual property, privacy, authenticity, and other limitations. In short, be excellent to each other.
Capitalized terms used but not defined in these Acceptable Use Policies have the meanings assigned to them in your main agreement with us — the GitHub Terms of Service or GitHub Customer Agreement, or the GitHub Corporate Terms of Service or other legacy GitHub contract, or a Microsoft volume licensing agreement. For customers subject to the legacy Corporate Terms of Service, "you" and "your" refer to "Customer" or "Users". "We", "us", and "our" refer to "GitHub".
Compliance with Laws and Regulations
You are responsible for using the Service in compliance with all applicable laws, regulations, and all of our Acceptable Use Policies. These policies may be updated from time to time and are provided below.
User Safety
We do not allow content or activity on GitHub that:
is unlawful or promotes unlawful activities;
is sexually obscene or relates to sexual exploitation or abuse, including of minors;
is libelous, defamatory, or fraudulent;
is discriminatory or abusive toward any individual or group;
is false, inaccurate, or intentionally deceptive information and likely to adversely affect the public interest (including health, safety, election integrity, and civic participation);
harasses or abuses another individual or group, including our employees, officers, and agents, or other users;
threatens or incites violence toward any individual or group, especially on the basis of who they are;
gratuitously depicts or glorifies violence, including violent images; or
is off-topic, or interacts with platform features in a way that significantly or repeatedly disrupts the experience of other users.
Intellectual Property, Authenticity, and Private Information
We do not allow content or activity on GitHub that:
infringes any proprietary right of any party, including patent, trademark, trade secret, copyright, right of publicity, or other right;
unlawfully shares unauthorized product licensing keys, software for generating unauthorized product licensing keys, or software for bypassing checks for product licensing keys, including extension of a free license beyond its trial period;
impersonates any person or entity, including any of our employees or representatives, including through false association with GitHub, or by fraudulently misrepresenting your identity or site's purpose; or
violates the privacy of any third party, such as by posting another person's personal information without consent.
Spam and Inauthentic Activity on GitHub
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HTML document. Document created on Tue Jul 15th, 2025. Last updated on Fri Oct 17th, 2025.
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