GitHub anti-bribery and events policies now open source

As a company that takes our commitment to social responsibility seriously, we’ve created and open sourced policies for others to adapt and use. We’re excited to announce that we’ve added four new policies to the collection.

Anti-bribery policies

The Anti-Bribery Statement and Gifts and Entertainment Policy are policies related to bribery. We designed these policies to promote compliance with anti-bribery laws, including the US Foreign Corrupt Practices Act and the UK Bribery Act.

Beyond our policy commitment to prohibiting bribery, the statement describes the concrete actions we take to back up our words. A key element of ensuring our employees know how to avoid bribery is education. We now provide anti-bribery training to all employees, with additional training for particularly relevant people and teams, like the sales team. We also now require our channel partners and vendors to comply with our anti-bribery statement.

In describing our anti-bribery policies, we note our Code of Ethics, Standards of Conduct, and Gifts and Entertainment Policy. We decided to open source a separate policy on gifts and entertainment to provide more detail on the activities with the highest risk of potential bribery. We include examples of what’s acceptable and what’s unacceptable, explain consequences for violations, and link to the DOJ and SEC’s Resource Guide on the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act.

Events policies

With GitHub’s annual Universe conference coming up, we realized it was a great time to update and open source our Event Terms and Event Code of Conduct. Both policies aim to create an inclusive, inviting, engaging, and safe place for people to learn and participate.

The code of conduct sets expectations for event speakers, attendees, exhibitors, organizers, and volunteers to show each other respect and courtesy. We make it clear that we are dedicated to providing a positive and harassment-free event experience for everyone—regardless of age, gender, gender identity and expression, sexual orientation, disability, personal appearance, body size, ethnicity, race, religion, nationality, or level of experience—and that we do not tolerate harassment of event participants in any form. We provide examples of acceptable and unacceptable behavior and contact information for reporting incidents. The terms provide more of the legalese, including basic requirements to attend (like agreeing to the code of conduct).

We hope our policies will help our users who may lack time or other resources to craft policies by providing a starting point and basis for them to contribute to best practices against bribery and corruption. We welcome you to adapt and reuse these policies.

Check out GitHub’s open source policies

Written by

Abby Vollmer

@vollmera

I'm GitHub's Director of Platform Policy and Counsel, building and guiding implementation of GitHub’s approach to content moderation. My work focuses on developing GitHub’s policy positions, providing legal support on content policy development and enforcement, and engaging with policymakers to support policy outcomes that empower developers and shape the future of software.