Legal

Terms of Service

By using opub you agree to these terms. If you don't agree, please don't use the service.

Last updated: May 2026

1. What opub is

opub is a donated compute platform. Donors fund open source projects with project-level donated compute; maintainers of those projects spend that balance on AI model tokens through capped compute keys routed via OpenRouter. opub is not a general-purpose API resale service, a payment processor, a bank, or a charitable donation platform. Funds support provider compute usage, not direct cash grants to individuals.

2. Eligibility and accounts

You must be at least 18 years old and legally capable of entering into a binding agreement to use opub. Accounts are created through GitHub OAuth. You are responsible for all activity under your account and for keeping your GitHub credentials secure. opub may suspend or terminate accounts that violate these terms, abuse the platform, or engage in fraudulent activity.

3. Donations

Donations fund a specific project's donated compute balance. They are not cash grants to maintainers, not charitable contributions, and not equity or debt instruments.

Donations are generally non-refundable once a checkout session is completed, as the funds are committed to provider compute credit. Exceptions are handled on a case-by-case basis — contact hello@opub.dev for disputes, errors, or fraud concerns. opub reserves the right to issue refunds at its discretion.

Tax is calculated at checkout where applicable. opub does not provide tax advice. Donations are not represented as tax-deductible in any jurisdiction.

4. Project pages and unclaimed projects

opub may create public project pages for open source repositories before a maintainer claims them. These pages are informational. They do not imply endorsement, affiliation, or sponsorship by the repository's maintainers or contributors.

Donations made to an unclaimed project page are held and restricted to that project. If a project remains unclaimed, opub may refund donations or, at its discretion, redirect the balance to similar projects after reasonable notice.

If you are a maintainer, trademark holder, or representative of a project and believe a page is inaccurate, should not be listed, or requires correction, contact hello@opub.dev. opub will review and respond promptly.

5. Maintainer accounts and verification

To claim a project and create compute keys, you must verify your GitHub identity and demonstrate admin or maintain access on the repository. opub uses GitHub's app installation flow to confirm ownership. Verification grants you access to the project's donated compute balance.

You may not claim projects you do not maintain. Fraudulent claims may result in account termination and reversal of any compute usage or balance transfers.

6. Compute keys

Compute keys are capped credentials provisioned through OpenRouter. Each key has a dollar limit set by the maintainer and reserved from the project's available balance. Keys may be created, refreshed, and disabled within your project dashboard.

You are responsible for the security of your compute keys. Keys should be stored in a system credential store and not committed to version control or shared publicly. opub displays each key once at creation. If a key is lost or compromised, disable it and create a new one.

Compute keys may only be used for legitimate open source project work. Using keys to generate spam, abusive content, or in violation of OpenRouter's or any model provider's usage policies is prohibited and may result in immediate key revocation and account termination.

7. Starter grants and launch seeds

opub may fund projects directly through first-party grants or launch seed campaigns. Seeded funds appear in the project ledger as ordinary donations from opub. The label does not imply endorsement, a shared public allocation, or ongoing support. Grant eligibility criteria, amounts, and campaign terms are set by opub and may change. Grants are subject to verification requirements and per-project or per-owner caps.

8. Provider and model terms

Compute is routed through OpenRouter. Model providers include Anthropic, OpenAI, Mistral, MiniMax, and others. By using compute keys, you agree to comply with OpenRouter's terms and the usage policies of whichever models you access. opub is not responsible for provider outages, model behaviour, or changes to provider pricing or availability.

9. Acceptable use

You agree not to:

  • Use opub to generate illegal, abusive, or harmful content
  • Attempt to circumvent spending caps, verification systems, or access controls
  • Create multiple accounts to inflate grant eligibility or donation matching
  • Use the platform to launder funds or conduct fraudulent transactions
  • Reverse-engineer, scrape, or systematically harvest opub data
  • Interfere with the security or integrity of the service

Violations may result in immediate suspension, key revocation, balance forfeiture, and referral to appropriate authorities.

10. Prompts and content

opub does not observe, store, log, or train on prompt content, model responses, code, diffs, or files processed through compute keys. You remain responsible for what you send to model providers. Do not send secrets, private credentials, regulated personal data, or confidential information unless you have reviewed and accepted the relevant provider's data policy. Provider terms govern how your input and output data is handled on their infrastructure.

11. Public ledger

Token spend events associated with a project are publicly visible in the project ledger. Linked sessions — those started through the opub CLI — include the agent name, compute key identifier, and project name. No prompt, response, file, or work content is ever made public. Public attribution of donations is optional and controlled by the donor in their dashboard.

12. Disclaimer of warranties

opub is provided "as is" without warranties of any kind, express or implied. We do not warrant that the service will be uninterrupted, error-free, or that compute will always be available. Provider outages, model changes, and infrastructure issues are outside our control. Use the service at your own risk.

13. Limitation of liability

To the maximum extent permitted by applicable law, opub is not liable for any indirect, incidental, special, consequential, or punitive damages, including but not limited to lost compute, lost data, or revenue loss, arising out of or related to your use of the service. Our total liability for any claim arising from your use of opub will not exceed the amount you paid to opub in the twelve months preceding the claim.

14. Changes to these terms

opub may update these terms from time to time. Material changes will be noted with a revised date at the top of this page. Continued use of the service after a change constitutes acceptance of the updated terms.

15. Contact

Questions, disputes, refund requests, or removal requests: hello@opub.dev.