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  • What if I, as an admin, lose access to my GitHub (GitLab, etc) account?
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  1. for hosted member projects

Governance and Mediation

What project admins should know about governance for OSC-hosted projects

PreviousDomain Transfers and RegistrationNextGoogle Summer of Code

Last updated 14 days ago

OSC supports the infrastructure needs of open source projects, but our model might differ from other fiscal sponsors who take a more hands-on role on a project level. We expect project administrators to manage their project’s leadership structure, decision-making processes, and access to shared resources like the codebase as part of their governance.

OSC supports your autonomy — you know what’s best for your code and community. However, we also reckognize that governance challenges can arise. While we can’t step in to resolve every issue, this section outlines how OSC responds in situations that affect project stability, access to funds, or our responsibilities as fiscal host.

We plan to expand this section with more guidance over time. In the meantime, you can explore our Resource Guide for additional support, including various blog posts and tools related to governance and project stewardship.

What if I, as an admin, lose access to my GitHub (GitLab, etc) account?

OSC holds funds on behalf of a community. Ideally, a single maintainer losing access is not a substantial event, as other admins of your project should still have access. Please contact GitHub.

However, if you lost access as a result of internal governance breakdowns, security incidents, etc., we will freeze your account at the first instance to do our best to ensure that the money we hold on behalf of your project stays where it is until this is resolved. You will need to resolve your governance issues and access to your accounts directly, with your code hosting provider. Once you can show that you have multiple admins who have access to your code again, please get in touch.

OSC will keep accounts frozen until all of our original terms of fiscal sponsorship are met. This can also include other incidents, such as deletion of Codes of Conduct or a severe loss of community membership (through a forking event, etc.).


The other admins have locked me out! What can OSC do?

Please see the above. Email us immediately at hello@oscollective.org.


I am unable to access my original codebase, permanently. Can OSC release funds to me individually?

No. OSC holds funds on behalf of communities. We will work with you if you are able to show multiple members of your team are interested in a fork. However, OSC does not make arbitration decisions and we are not professional mediators. Please see our , the Termination section, for more on how we manage funds if we decide that we have to terminate our agreement with your collective due to unresolvable issues.

Terms of Fiscal Sponsorship