Terms of service

What Gitback is

You give Gitback the URL of a GitHub repository — the Source Repo — and it renders a Board: a public-facing portal with Feedback, Roadmap, Changelog and FAQ modules over that repository's own Discussions, Issues, Releases and labels. It is a view of the repository and a way to write back into it.

Anyone can open a Board for a public repository without an account. Claiming a Board — becoming the Client who can curate it — requires signing in with GitHub from an account with write access to that repository. GitHub is the only sign-in Gitback accepts.

Who can use it

You must be at least 16 years old to sign in to Gitback, and old enough to agree to these terms where you live. If you use Gitback for an organisation, you confirm you may bind it to these terms, and “you” includes it. You must also keep to GitHub's own terms: every Board is built on a GitHub account and a GitHub repository.

Your content stays yours

Your content lives in GitHub: feedback, roadmap, changelog, FAQ and Help. On a public repository's Board, every idea, comment and vote is a real GitHub object in the Source Repo, made by your own GitHub account. There are exceptions, and they are set out in full in the privacy policy: we cache what GitHub returns for a short time so Boards load; on a private repository's Board, a signed-in person who cannot write to the repository posts through the Gitback App, which authors the post and names them, and their votes are records we keep; a Support Inbox writer without a GitHub account is reached by email, and we keep that address; and the settings, billing and sign-in records Gitback needs to run are kept by us.

You keep every right you have in what you write. You give us the licence we need to run Gitback with it, and no more: to fetch it from GitHub, store it briefly in our cache, show it on the Boards it belongs to, send a question and a Board's published content to an AI model to answer an FAQ question, and post it to GitHub when you ask us to. You confirm you have the right to post it.

Content in a repository is also governed by that repository's licence and by your agreement with GitHub. We cannot edit or delete it for you on GitHub: those are GitHub actions, taken with your GitHub account, or by the repository's owner.

What we write into your repository

Before the first time Gitback writes anything into a Source Repo, it shows you exactly what will be created and asks you to confirm. That footprint is a .gitback/ directory of plain files and a few namespaced labels — nothing that needs a runtime of ours to make sense of.

Declining is a supported answer, not an error. A Board that runs without a footprint still does most of its job; the settings it would have kept in your repository are kept by us instead. You can withdraw consent later, which stops our future writes. It never deletes what is already there, because those files and labels are yours.

Boards, claiming and takedown

A public repository can be given a Board by anyone, including someone who does not own it. If you can write to the repository and do not want the Board, you can take it down, and the takedown is permanent: the repository cannot be re-boarded by anyone re-typing the URL, and only a Claim from an account with write access reopens it.

A Client decides whether their Board is published. An unpublished Board shows other visitors nothing but a notice. Paying for a plan does not publish anything.

Removal requests and copyright

A Board shows what is in its Source Repo, including Discussions and Issues written by people who have never used Gitback. If your GitHub post appears on a Board you do not own and you want it gone, you can edit or delete it on GitHub, ask the repository's owner, or write to us at hello@coduo.co with the Board's URL and the item, and we will take it up with the Board's Client. Only you, the repository's owner or GitHub can remove it from GitHub; once it is gone there, it leaves Gitback when our cache next refreshes.

If you believe something on Gitback infringes your copyright, send a notice to the same address with: your contact details; the work you say is infringed; the URL of the material on Gitback; a statement that you believe in good faith the use is not authorised by you, your agent or the law; a statement, under penalty of perjury, that your notice is accurate and that you are the owner or authorised to act for the owner; and your physical or electronic signature. We respond to valid notices under the U.S. Digital Millennium Copyright Act, and we will tell you if the content is also on GitHub, which has its own process. Someone whose material we removed may send a counter-notice with the details the Act requires. We end the access of people who repeatedly infringe.

Plans and payment

Boards for public, open-source repositories are free. A Board for a private repository needs a signed-in GitHub account on a paid plan. Current prices and what each plan includes are on the pricing page, which is the authority; prices may change, and a change to your plan's price applies from your next billing period after we tell you.

Paid plans are sold through our payment processor, which acts as merchant of record. It bills you in advance, holds your card details (we never see them), calculates and collects sales tax, VAT or GST, sends your receipts and invoices, and handles payment and subscription support. Coduo Studio LLC still runs Gitback and supports the product. Prices on the pricing page do not include tax; any tax is added at checkout. You can cancel at any time and the plan runs to the end of the period you have paid for. We do not refund part-used periods as a rule, but if Gitback did not do what you paid for, write to us and we will sort it out.

If a payment fails or a plan lapses, a private repository's Board stops being served. Nothing in your repository is touched.

If you leave

If you stop paying, or Gitback disappears entirely, everything under .gitback/ and every label we created stays in your repository and keeps working. They are plain files and native GitHub labels; reading them needs nothing of ours. We will never write anything into a Source Repo that is meaningless without our product. Settings we keep for you rather than in your repository end with your use of Gitback.

Using it reasonably

We ask a few things of you. Do not use Gitback to:

• post unlawful content, or content that infringes someone else's rights;
• harass anyone, on a Board or through the repository behind it;
• impersonate a repository's maintainer, or present a Board you do not own as officially theirs;
• send spam, or put malware or tracking into a Board, a Theme or anything Gitback serves;
• work around the entitlement checks or rate limits, or scrape the service in a way that degrades it for other people;
• attempt to reach repositories or accounts your GitHub credentials do not already give you.

We can stop serving a Board, or refuse service to an account, that does these things. Where we do, we will say why, unless the law or someone's safety stops us.

Availability, warranties and liability

Gitback depends on GitHub and on the other services named in the privacy policy. When GitHub's API is unavailable or rate-limits us, parts of a Board will be too. We aim to keep the service running and do not promise that it always will be. It is provided “as is” and “as available”, without warranties of any kind, express or implied, including merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose and non-infringement, except those the law gives you and does not let us exclude. FAQ answers are written by an AI model and can be wrong.

To the extent the law allows, Coduo Studio LLC is not liable for indirect, incidental, special, consequential or punitive loss, or for lost profits, data or goodwill, and our total liability to you for any claim is limited to the greater of what you paid us in the twelve months before it arose and one hundred US dollars. Nothing here limits liability for death, personal injury or fraud, or any liability the law does not let us limit.

Indemnity

You agree to defend and indemnify Coduo Studio LLC and its members, employees and agents against any claim, loss or cost (including reasonable legal fees) that arises from content you post through Gitback, a Board you run, or your breach of these terms or of the law. This does not apply to the extent the claim is caused by our own breach or negligence.

Ending this agreement

You can stop using Gitback at any time: cancel any plan, take your Board down or stop signing in, and revoke Gitback's access on GitHub (the privacy policy says where). We can end or suspend your access if you breach these terms, or end the service with reasonable notice. The clauses on content, liability, indemnity and governing law survive the end of this agreement.

Governing law and disputes

These terms are governed by the laws of the State of Delaware, USA, without regard to its conflict-of-law rules. Any dispute arising from them or from Gitback will be brought only in the state or federal courts located in Delaware, and you and we consent to those courts' jurisdiction. If you are a consumer, this does not take away the protection of the mandatory laws of the country you live in, or your right to bring a claim in its courts.

If any part of these terms cannot be enforced, the rest still applies. If we do not enforce a clause straight away, we have not given it up. You may not transfer this agreement without our consent; we may transfer it as part of a merger, acquisition or sale of Gitback. These terms and the privacy policy are the whole agreement between us about Gitback.

Changes to these terms

We may change these terms. When a change is material, we will tell Clients with an account before it takes effect, and the date at the top of this page always says when the wording last moved. Continuing to use Gitback after a change takes effect means you accept it; if you do not, stop using it, and everything in your repository stays where it is.

Contact

Gitback is run by Coduo Studio LLC, Delaware, USA. Questions about these terms, takedowns, removal or copyright requests, or anything else go to hello@coduo.co.

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