Licensing and Contributions

Licensing and Contributions

OSINT Forge license

OSINT Forge is distributed under the GNU General Public License v3.0 or later. Contributions must be submitted under the same terms. The canonical license file is preserved verbatim. Copyright © 2026 LizardPope1101.

Third-party tools

OSINT Forge installs and invokes independent programs; it does not bundle or relicense them. Each program remains subject to its own license and service terms. Review the canonical third-party notices. Accepted plugins must update those notices when required.

Contribution rules

• Submit only material you have the right to distribute.
• Never include credentials, personal information, real targets, case artifacts, or investigation results.
• Use synthetic fixtures and examples.
• Keep tool-specific behavior in plugins.
• Preserve safe argument arrays, restrained defaults, private permissions, provenance, and migrations.
• Update documentation and tests with behavior changes. Release-specific wiki changes follow live validation, and administrative closeout must update every applicable repository document and wiki page and announce the release in GitHub Discussions with a high-level overview and changelog link.
• Keep unrelated changes in separate pull requests.
• Disclose material AI assistance and personally review, understand, and accept responsibility for the submitted work.
• Do not connect an AI system to the repository or authorize repository access; only LizardPope1101 may do so. Contributors may use disconnected AI assistance subject to the complete AI Development Policy. AI use does not alter licensing, attribution, quality, security, testing, or review obligations.

Validation

./scripts/dev-check.sh osint forge validate --json

GitHub Actions additionally checks ShellCheck, executable modes, Python 3.10 through 3.13, plugin contracts, and clean Debian stable and Ubuntu 24.04 install/upgrade/uninstall workflows.

Plugin contributions

Every candidate requires explicit maintenance, authoritative-upstream, licensing, installation, safety, authorization, lifecycle, adapter, and disposable-environment review. Record an accept, defer, or reject decision. Read the canonical Contributing Guide, AI Development Policy, Governance and Maintainer Authority, and Plugin Development before opening a pull request.