germany website
Do Github Projects by Germans Require an &quot;Imprint&quot; (Link) in their Readme?
<p>As is discussed in various places, German law requires an "imprint"/"Impressum" (a page with some contact information, such as a physical address and an e-mail address, on the person responsible for the site) for virtually every<sup>1</sup> website.</p>

<p>In a <a href="https://law.stackexchange.com/questions/28161/germany-does-a-github-io-hosted-site-require-imprint-data-privacy-statement-a">recent question</a>, it was asked whether this also applies to sites hosted on <a href="https://pages.github.com/" rel="noreferrer">Github Pages</a>. That question can be answered in a pretty straightforward way (sites hosted on Github Pages are basically no different from any other website, as the author has full and sole control over the appearance of the page.</p>

<p>This question refers to the default appearance of projects on Github, though. Authors have no influence on the general appearance of these projects, as Github displays them in their default layout. The introductory page of a project displays the repository content (the files stored for the project) and is arguably somewhat customizeable in that the content of a file called <code>readme.md</code> from the repository will be displayed below the files list, if it exists.</p>

<p>Now, "common sense" (sorry, could not resist) would tell me that Github owns and controls this page and is thus the first point of contact for any "official" activity. However, it seems that German courts are increasingly ruling that placing, or at least linking to such an "imprint" is also required on various social network profile sites such as Facebook or Google+<sup>2</sup>. On the other hand, the requirement for an "imprint" on business social networks such as Xing and LinkedIn seems to be disputed even for businesses presenting themselves there<sup>3</sup>.</p>

<p>Therefore, my question is: Is at least the requirement of an "imprint" on social media profiles limited to actually commercial enterprises, or are all German owners of Github projects who do not link to an "imprint" in their <code>readme.md</code> (if even that is sufficient, given that this link may not be intuitively discoverable) vulnerable to receiving costly <a href="https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abmahnung" rel="noreferrer">cease-and-desist letters</a>?</p>

<p><em>Related bonus "question": Exemplary links to Github projects by German owners that are "doing it right" are appreciated.</em></p>

<hr>

<p><sup>1</sup>: There are some exceptions for "purely personal" sites, but any information I can find in German implies that nothing that might be of interest to any stranger on the web can possibly "purely personal" in the interpretation of German courts.</p>

<p><sup>2</sup>: <a href="https://www.rockit-internet.de/en/what-is-an-impressum/" rel="noreferrer">General information in English</a>, some more information in German: <a href="https://www.it-recht-kanzlei.de/impressum-bei-facebook.html" rel="noreferrer">1</a>, <a href="https://www.heise-regioconcept.de/produkte/facebook-werbung/facebook-impressum" rel="noreferrer">2</a>, <a href="http://www.computerbild.de/artikel/cb-News-Facebook-Fanseiten-brauchen-Impressum-8106896.html" rel="noreferrer">3</a>, <a href="http://geld-im-netz.de/facebook-impressum-ist-pflicht-was-ist-zu-beachten/" rel="noreferrer">4</a></p>

<p><sup>3</sup>: Two articles in German: <a href="https://www.ra-plutte.de/abmahnungen-wegen-fehlendem-impressum-auf-xing/" rel="noreferrer">1</a>, <a href="https://staffxperts.de/blog/anleitung-fuer-ein-rechtssicheres-impressum-bei-xing-und-linkedin/" rel="noreferrer">2</a></p>

<h1>Impressum Requirement</h1>
<p>Wow, based on your citations, you've done a lot of research on this topic. I'm just going to add <a href="https://www.it-recht-kanzlei.de/Thema/impressum-tmg.html" rel="nofollow noreferrer">one more reference</a>, which is from the same site as your first German citation and has incredibly detailed and judicially referenced information on almost everything related to the <em>Impressum</em>. All my non-GitHub links are to sections of that page.</p>
<p>Based on your research, I'm going to take it for granted that you understand that according to the <em>Telemediengesetz</em> (TMG), an <em>Impressum</em> is required on a web page if it is &quot;business-like&quot; (<em>geschäftsmäßig</em>), or if it helps, I prefer to word it as &quot;potentially commercial.&quot; I would have to argue that open source projects have to be seen as inherently &quot;business-like&quot; for the purposes of the TMG for two reasons:</p>
<ol>
<li>Some other legal person may have similar software as part of their business and might have the need to serve legal notifications to the owner of a GitHub project (TMG § 8 gives competitors the right to sue). Think potential copyright violations here.</li>
<li>It is possible to build a more traditional commercial business around open source, for example what Canonical is doing around Ubuntu.</li>
</ol>
<p>Additionally, the common legal advice is to even include an <em>Impressum</em> on a personal blog, though I'm not aware of any court case having occurred at that level yet. In my opinion, a GitHub account can be seen as more &quot;business-like&quot; than a personal blog, and would follow that advice out of caution.</p>
<p>I'll note that the XING situation you bring up <a href="https://www.it-recht-kanzlei.de/Thema/impressum-tmg.html?#sect_7" rel="nofollow noreferrer">is complicated</a>. It centers over whether the content of XING pages is &quot;business-like&quot; according to the TMG. It may well turn out that some pages will need an <em>Impressum</em> and others won't.</p>
<p>As for placing it in the project's <code>readme.md</code>, that <em>might</em> work but I have two concerns:</p>
<ol>
<li>The courts have essentially stated that the text of the link must imply that the required information under TMG § 5 is located there. For example, the words <a href="https://www.it-recht-kanzlei.de/Thema/impressum-tmg.html?page=1#sect_1" rel="nofollow noreferrer"><em>Impressum</em> and <em>Kontakt</em> work</a>, but the word <a href="https://www.it-recht-kanzlei.de/Thema/impressum-tmg.html?page=1#sect_2" rel="nofollow noreferrer"><em>Information</em> does not</a>. To me, &quot;readme&quot; is not sufficient, but this concern might be negated by the fact GitHub by default renders the <code>readme.md</code> directly on the project home page.</li>
<li>While it has been ruled that <a href="https://www.it-recht-kanzlei.de/Thema/impressum-tmg.html?page=1#sect_5" rel="nofollow noreferrer">the <em>Impressum</em> does not necessarily have to be directly on the home page</a> (for GitHub, that would be the company's/users profile page), it must still be readily available in an intuitive location. I don't know if putting it in a project page satisfies the legal requirement. If it was sufficient, it's also likely that each project would have to have an <em>Impressum</em> so that it can't be missed.</li>
</ol>
<h1>Examples</h1>
<p>The dominant pattern that I could find<sup>1</sup> on GitHub is an off-site link to the <em>Impressum</em> contained in the profile page's byline right underneath the title. Examples: <a href="https://github.com/sedadigital" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https://github.com/sedadigital</a>, <a href="https://github.com/comsysto" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https://github.com/comsysto</a>, <a href="https://github.com/znes" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https://github.com/znes</a>, <a href="https://github.com/eSagu" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https://github.com/eSagu</a>, <a href="https://github.com/TIBHannover" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https://github.com/TIBHannover</a>. I'm almost certain this meets or exceeds the legal requirements.</p>
<p>Example screenshot: <a href="https://i.stack.imgur.com/GXIsQ.png" rel="nofollow noreferrer"><img src="https://i.stack.imgur.com/GXIsQ.png" alt="example screenshot of Impressum link on GitHub page" /></a></p>
<p>Additionally, I found a few that had a repository specifically for an <em>Impressum</em>. Example: <a href="https://github.com/johsteffens" rel="nofollow noreferrer">https://github.com/johsteffens</a>. Since these repositories were clearly visible on the user's main page (either because there weren't enough repositories to make them span multiple pages, or because it was specifically pinned to the main page), I would argue these also meet the legal requirement for being readily available.</p>
<p>While I didn't find any examples of it, another possibility would be to combine the above two approaches, having a link in the byline that links to an <em>Impressum</em> repository or some other page within GitHub. This would be useful if you didn't otherwise have an <em>Impressum</em> hosted elsewhere.</p>
<p>There were also scattered examples of people placing an <em>Impressum</em> on a project wiki page or on an <code>impressum.md</code> file at the top level. However, none of the users I looked at were consistent in doing this across all their projects. Also as previously mentioned, it's questionable whether not having it on the main user profile page meets the legal requirement. The Wiki page in particular I don't think meets the requirement that it can easily be found.</p>
<hr />
<ol>
<li>Found using the following Google search: <code>site:github.com impressum -impressum.php -impressum.html -impressum.jsp -impressum-manager -github.io -issue</code>. Exclusions meant to filter out a lot of false positives, mostly projects for websites that had their <em>Impressum</em> in code format meant for deploy and not for display on GitHub itself.</li>
</ol>
