Releasing source code under a permissive license has many benefits. Chiefly, it allows members of the general public to review, test, and contribute code to a project to improve its security and quality.

The school can also internally review the software for stability and security without requiring any action from the developers.

An open-source license does not mean that anyone can contribute code without approval; this is a common misconception. External contributions must be extensively reviewed before they are integrated.

Sure. This is being written by an ex-student :)

If you're a former member of the club, you can continue to contribute as a member, especially to projects you worked on while in the club.

If you were never a member of the club, you can still contribute as a member of the general public. You can make pull requests and contact us with our public information, but you will not receive a CodETHS role on the Discord server or gain privileged access to our GitHub organization.

Yes. All of our software is released under open-source licenses, so virtually anyone can use it without asking for permission. If you're unsure what each license allows you to do, you can check tldrlegal for a short summary. 

All of our software should have a LICENSE file in the root directory of its source code containing the full text of its license. If it doesn't, that's a mistake and you should let us know about it.

(This is not legal advice; none of us are lawyers. If you're using our software for something extraordinary, you should check with a lawyer first.)

To report something wrong with official school software, like HAC or MyETHS, contact David Chan with your school e-mail. Do not contact a CodETHS member about these issues if they affect security - we can't fix them, so we don't need to know.

To report something wrong with CodETHS software, like ETHSBell, contact David Chan on your school e-mail or a CodETHS member (preferably Willow Carlson-Huber, Albert Portnoy, or Oliver Leopold) on our Discord server. Contact us privately if the issue impacts security. You can also file an Issue on the relevant GitHub repository for feature requests or non-security-impacting problems.