Open source projects

A project can be made public: then anybody reads it by a link to its board, an issue or a wiki page — somebody with no account, or somebody signed in who does not work in your company. They read its issues, their comments and attached files, and its wiki. Nobody from outside writes in it unless the project lets them in.

Only an open source project can be made public: one bound to a public repository on GitHub or GitLab. The tracker is meant for the project the world already reads, not as a way to publish pages.

1. Bind the repository: give its address when the project is created, or open the board menu → 🧩 Repositories… and tick Open source: this project’s public repository on it. The host is asked, without an account, whether anybody can read it and under which licence; a private repository cannot be marked.
2. Open the board menu → 🌐 Public access… and press Make public…. The window says how many issues and wiki pages it will show.
3. Confirm with Yes, make it public.

Only the project’s owner opens or closes it — its lead, or the lead of its parent project. A board administrator does not. Every member can open the window and see whether the project is public, since when and who opened it. Opening and closing are written in the company’s activity journal.

• A subproject is not opened with its parent: each has its own switch.
• The host is asked again every day. If the repository becomes private or disappears, the project is closed at once and its lead is told; a host that simply does not answer closes nothing.
• Close to the public works at once: links stop opening for anybody outside the project.

A public project says so at the top of its board, its issues and its pages, so whoever writes there knows it is read from outside.

A visitor reads at the members’ own addresses, read-only: the board, the issues with their comments and files, the wiki. There is nothing to type into, no menu and no assistant; a button at the top signs them in and brings them back to the same link. A link pasted into a chat shows the title and the start of the text.

Never shown, even in a public project:

• people’s email addresses and the company’s list of people; watchers only as a number;
• the project’s settings, webhooks, environments and stored credentials;
• the assistant, the agents and what they cost, the plan and money, the company’s journal;
• subprojects and the company’s other projects — a link from a public issue to a closed one is counted, not named;
• a deployment’s commit and pipeline: only the environment and the time.

A visitor who is signed in sees Ask to take part at the top of the project and may add a word about themselves. The project’s maintainers — its owner and its administrators — are told and decide under board menu → 🙋 Requests to take part…: Let in or Decline. Whoever asked is told by email either way; a declined request may be made again after two weeks.

Let in, the person is a reporter on that project: they file issues and comment, and nothing else. They take no seat and are not of your company — its other projects, people and settings stay closed to them. A maintainer gives a broader role or takes the place away under 👥 People on the board….

A reporter or a commenter writes a limited amount a day, each project counted on its own:

• in their first week on the project, ten issues and comments in all;
• after that, thirty issues and a hundred comments.

The day is the last twenty-four hours, and a deleted comment still counts. Past the limit the write is refused with the time it is possible again — a 429 through the API. Members, administrators and the owner have no limit.

A tool reads a public project through the tracker API and the wiki API with no token at all — search included — and finds only what is public. Reading from outside is limited per minute, per address and per company; past it the answer is a 429 with Retry-After. Members with a token are not limited this way.

The MCP server is for accounts: a tool without a token gets nothing from it, public project or not.

Off by default: a public project’s pages ask search engines not to index them. The owner turns it on in the same window with Let search engines index it; its issues, pages and board are then in the workspace’s sitemap. Closing the project takes them out at once.

Links to other sites in a public project’s wiki are marked nofollow ugc: search engines are told we do not vouch for them.

People of your company who work only on public projects take no seat. Nothing is applied for: the rule is read from who is on which project.

• The owner and administrators always take a seat, as does anybody who is also on a closed project, reads a closed subproject or has a closed issue or page opened to them.
• Storage, the packs, AI Pro and Legal acts cost what they cost everyone.
• Settings → Billing says how many people take no seat.
• If a project stops being public, its people take seats from the next period. The period already paid is not touched; the owner is told the day it closes, with how many people and from which day, and the billing screen says the same.

When every project of a company is public, the company is not made read-only when its trial or paid period ends unpaid. It keeps working as it is, and the reminders about the period ending are not sent. Settings → Billing says so.

A new project starts closed. When one is created, or a public one is closed, the company has three days to make it public:

• The company’s owner, and whoever created or closed the project, are told the date. The form that creates the project says the same, and so does Settings → Billing.
• Made public in time, nothing changes.
• Still closed after the three days, the company needs a paid plan from then: the usual seven days of grace start that day, and after them the company becomes read-only as described in Billing and read-only.

Storage, the packs of issues and pages, AI and the add-ons are paid as usual: going past the included amount still gives seven days and then read-only. The rest of billing is on Billing and read-only.

A public project is for an open source project’s own work. If one is used for something else — pages to carry links, an imitation of somebody’s site — we close it to the public, and its owner cannot open it again; the window says so. The closing is written in the company’s journal. If you think it was a mistake, write to us.

• No public link to one issue or one page of a closed project. For one thing, open it to a guest instead.
• No joining without a maintainer: every request waits for one.
• A visitor’s search covers nothing yet: they follow links and the board.
• A repository on a host other than GitHub or GitLab cannot make a project open source.