> Assuming github does have feature(s) that require additional privileges to the source beyond what the open source license provides, doesn't that preclude host

> Assuming github does have feature(s) that require additional privileges to the source beyond what the open source license provides, doesn't that preclude hosting any project where any single one of the contributors don't contribute via github? Yes it does. If there's a license that says "you must not make backups of the code on Thursdays", then hosting it on github would be incompatible with the license. So is hosting other people's non-open-source code in a public repo. Github's ToS put the responsibility of checking that the compatibility of the license and github features on whoever uploads the code. > The point was that their cover-your-ass move is preventing a large number of open source projects from being hosted on the service in compliance with the ToS. Well, there are features that Github wants to have on public repos, for example public code search with short snippets, and the "fork" button. Their ToS has to "cover their ass" for these features, their lawyers would throw a fit if they kept the features without asking for permission in the ToS. If there are OSS licenses that are not compatible with these features, then either the uploader or github was breaking copyright laws already. But I'm not convinced that its anywhere as big deal as the author of the article makes it seem. So github has public code search, which shows 5 line snippets of code with a link back to the repo. Does this satisfy LPPL's "code must be distributed unmodified" rule? Is this enough attribution to satisfy CC-BY? A reasonable person would say yes, because you can just click on the link to get to the whole repo with the full codebase and authors.txt file. But github isn't going to take the legal responsibility of checking each license for these questions, people uploading the code will have to do it themselves. (Also, github has no way of checking that the person uploading the code actually has the right to put the license.txt file on the code).