LightSeek Foundation Privacy Policy

Revised November 03, 2025

This Privacy Policy explains how LightSeek Foundation collects, uses, discloses, and protects personal information when you use our websites, read or submit website content, contribute to open source projects that we maintain, or participate in LightSeek events or meetups.

This Privacy Policy applies only to activities that we control. If you interact with us through GitHub or another third-party platform, that platform's privacy policy also applies.

Personal Information We Collect

We collect personal information in three main ways.

Information you provide. We may collect your name, email address, affiliation, and other information you choose to provide when you contact us, submit content, register for an event or meetup, or otherwise communicate with us.

Open source contributions. When you contribute code, documentation, issues, pull requests, comments, or other materials to a LightSeek project, we collect and maintain the information included with that contribution. This may include your name, username, email address, commit metadata, contribution content, sign-offs under the Developer Certificate of Origin (https://developercertificate.org/), and information related to project governance or technical discussions.

Automatically collected information. When you use our websites, we may collect basic technical and usage information, such as IP address, browser type, operating system, pages viewed, links clicked, referring URL, approximate location, and the date and time of access.

How We Use Personal Information

We use personal information to:

• operate, maintain, secure, and improve our websites;
• publish and manage website content;
• support open source project development, governance, collaboration, provenance, and license compliance;
• communicate with contributors, visitors, and event participants;
• organize and administer events and meetups;
• respond to questions, requests, and reports of misuse;
• protect the rights, safety, and integrity of LightSeek, our projects, contributors, and the public; and
• comply with legal obligations and enforce applicable terms and policies.

We do not sell personal information or share it for cross-context behavioral advertising.

Legal Bases for Processing

If the European Union’s General Data Protection Regulation (GDPR), the United Kingdom GDPR, Swiss data protection law, or similar data protection laws apply, our legal bases for processing personal information may include:

• your consent, such as when you choose to receive communications from us or register for an optional event;
• our legitimate interests, such as operating, securing, and improving our websites and open source projects, preserving attribution and project history, and preventing misuse;
• performance of a contract or steps before entering into a contract, such as responding to requests you make;
• compliance with legal obligations.

Where we rely on consent, you may withdraw that consent at any time, without affecting processing that occurred before withdrawal.

Public Project Information

Open source development is public by design. Information included in contributions, issue discussions, project records, meeting notes, release materials, and similar project spaces may be public and may remain available indefinitely to preserve project history, attribution, provenance, and license compliance.

If you contribute through GitHub or another third-party platform, you should review that platform's settings and privacy policy before submitting personal information.

How We Share Personal Information

We may disclose personal information:

• publicly, when the information is part of open source contributions, project records, website content, or other public materials;
• to service providers that help us host, operate, secure, or administer our websites, projects, communications, and events;
• to comply with law, legal process, or lawful requests from public authorities;
• to enforce our terms and policies, prevent misuse, investigate security issues, or protect rights, safety, and property; and
• in aggregated or de-identified form that does not reasonably identify an individual.

Retention

We keep personal information for as long as reasonably necessary for the purposes described in this Privacy Policy, including to operate our websites and projects, preserve open source project history, comply with legal obligations, resolve disputes, and enforce agreements.

Public open source records may be retained indefinitely because they support attribution, provenance, license compliance, security review, and the integrity of the project history.

Security

We use reasonable administrative, technical, and organizational measures designed to protect personal information. No method of transmission or storage is completely secure, and we cannot guarantee absolute security.

International Transfers

LightSeek is based in the United States. If you access our websites, contribute to our projects, or participate in our events from outside the United States, your personal information may be processed in the United States and other countries where privacy laws may differ from those in your jurisdiction.

Where applicable law requires a transfer mechanism for personal information transferred from the European Economic Area, the United Kingdom, Switzerland, or similar jurisdictions, we will use an appropriate safeguard or lawful transfer mechanism, such as adequacy decisions, standard contractual clauses, or another mechanism recognized by applicable law.

Cookies and Similar Technologies

We do not currently use advertising cookies or third-party analytics cookies on our websites. Our websites may use necessary cookies or local browser storage for basic site operation, security, routing, or user preferences such as appearance settings.

If we add analytics tools, advertising cookies, or other non-essential tracking technologies, we will update this Privacy Policy and provide choices where required by law.

Your Rights and Choices

Depending on where you live, you may have rights to access, correct, delete, restrict, or object to certain processing of your personal information, or to receive a copy of certain personal information in a portable format.

Residents of California and other U.S. states with privacy laws may also have rights to know what personal information is collected, used, disclosed, sold, or shared; to opt out of sale, sharing, targeted advertising, or certain profiling; to limit certain uses of sensitive personal information; to appeal a denied request; and to exercise privacy rights without discrimination, where those rights apply.

Individuals in the European Economic Area, the United Kingdom, Switzerland, and similar jurisdictions may also have rights to withdraw consent, object to processing based on legitimate interests, and lodge a complaint with a data protection authority.

Some requests may be limited by law, by the public nature of open source project records, or by our need to preserve accurate records for attribution, provenance, license compliance, security, and legal purposes. We may ask you to verify your identity before responding to a request.

To exercise privacy rights, contact us at [email protected]. We will respond within the time required by applicable law, generally within one month for requests under European data protection laws and within 45 days for California privacy requests where those laws apply. If we deny your request, you may appeal by replying to our decision or contacting us with “Privacy Appeal” in the subject line.

Children

Our websites and projects are not directed to children under 16. We do not knowingly collect personal information from children under 16. If we learn that we have collected personal information from a child under 16 without consent from a parent or guardian where required by law, we will take reasonable steps to delete it.

Third-Party Links and Platforms

Our websites and projects may link to third-party websites, repositories, platforms, and services. We are not responsible for the privacy practices of third parties. Please review their privacy policies before providing personal information to them.

Changes to This Privacy Policy

We may update this Privacy Policy from time to time. If we make material changes, we will provide notice by posting the updated policy on this page or by other reasonable means.

Contact Us

If you have questions about this Privacy Policy, our privacy practices, or a privacy rights request, please contact us at [email protected].