RFC: Terms of use for a new Git hosting platform for educational projects

Dominik George <[email protected]> Mon, 19 Jun 2017 22:01:17 +0200

Newsgroups	gmane.linux.skolelinux.devel,gmane.comp.python.education,gmane.linux.debian.devel.education
Organization	Teckids e.V.
Message-ID	<[email protected]>

Hi everybody,

we, Teckids e.V. [0], a German youth organisation around free software, are
in the process of making some of our internal systems and services
public for use by everyone contributing to or running educational
projects, or using free software in education.

The two major services will be Edugit, a code hosting platform running
GitLab, and a remote desktop system that can be used to use and develop
free software for education (RDP and browser-based access to a full
Debian desktop).

Edugit is, in our view, very necessary because all code hosting
platforms, like GitHub and GitLab.com, have terms of use that not only
may be bad for privacy or freedom [1], but above all lock out an
important group of contributors. Mainly because they are hosted in the
US where COPPA applies, all individuals underthe age of 13 are denied
access.

However, we believe that people of all ages should be able to contribute
in education. Therefore, we have started Edugit for our projects, and
are now one footstep away from making it public.

Please try to *not* discuss the usefulness or what you belive in this
thread - please contact us directly if you have concerns.

Today, we want to ask for your comments on our drafts for Terms of Use.
We tried to keep them as short and easy to understand as possible, while
imposing limitations only on the range of use of the platforms.

Please also do not provide legal advice - the terms will be reviewed by
a lawyer in addition to this RFC ☺.

Here are the drafts in German and English:

https://www.teckids.org/cgit/verein.git/plain/intern/tou_de.txt
https://www.teckids.org/cgit/verein.git/plain/intern/tou_en.txt

The drafts were created by people who are concerned by it most - a group
of contributors from 10 to 27 years of age (children are involved in
everything we do, fwiw).

We ask for all feedback, ranging from "cool, ack, go on" to all your
concerns (content-wise) and ideas. But please think before you post -
please do not flood your community's mailing list with "+1", only post
there if you want your post discussed. But please always keep me
<[email protected]> in the recipients, as I am not subscribed
to all lists this is posted to.

Looking forward to your feedback,
Nik

P.S.: If you can - and want to - support the projects financially,
please see https://www.teckids.org/spenden.htm (German) or just ask. We
always need it ☺!

[0]: https://www.teckids.org/
[1]: https://www.gnu.org/software/repo-criteria-evaluation.html

-- 
Dominik George (1. Vorstandsvorsitzender, pädagogischer Leiter)
Teckids e.V. - Erkunden, Entdecken, Erfinden.
https://www.teckids.org/

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