FOSS Template

A starter for a free and open source project. Fork it or use it as a GitHub template, then replace the placeholders and write your software.

It is the shared baseline for OpenHat Security and The FreeTech Company. A real project that follows this shape is OnionGate.

This is not a .github profile repository. A repo named .github on a user account becomes the profile README. This repo is named foss-template on purpose so you can fork it without hijacking anyone's profile.

What you get

GitHub's community profile checklist, plus the files GitHub applies as defaults and a VitePress docs site (same stack as OnionGate):

File	Why
LICENSE	OSI-approved MIT. Swap for GPL-3.0 if you want copyleft (OnionGate does).
CODE_OF_CONDUCT.md	Contributor Covenant 2.1
CONTRIBUTING.md	How to send a change
SECURITY.md	Private vulnerability reporting
SUPPORT.md	Where to ask for help
GOVERNANCE.md	Who decides
CHANGELOG.md	Keep a Changelog + SemVer
CITATION.cff	How to cite the project
.github/	Issue / PR templates, Dependabot, CI, Pages deploy
docs/	VitePress site → GitHub Pages

After you customize, check Insights → Community standards on the new repo.

Use it

1. Click Use this template (or fork — OpenHat Security and The FreeTech Company keep forks of this repo).
2. Follow SETUP.md. Search the tree for INSERT_ and replace every hit.
3. Enable Settings → Pages → Source: GitHub Actions.
4. Enable Settings → Code security → Private vulnerability reporting.
5. Put your code in src/ (create it) and keep docs in docs/.

npm ci
npm run docs:dev      # http://localhost:5173/foss-template/
npm run docs:build    # what CI and Pages build

Node version is in .nvmrc (22+, same floor as current VitePress).

Documentation

The site builds from docs/ and deploys on every push to main.

• Getting started
• Customize after a fork
• Write docs
• Community health files
• Changelog

Contributing

Contributions are welcome under MIT. Read CONTRIBUTING.md and the Code of Conduct. Report security issues privately per SECURITY.md — never in a public issue.

License

MIT. The Code of Conduct text is Contributor Covenant 2.1 (CC-BY-4.0).

Inspiration

• github/.github — community health files
• GitHub community health docs
• Open Source Guides
• diggsweden/open-source-project-template
• VitePress getting started and Pages deploy
• openhat-security/oniongate — live project with this layout