Activating the Plan

Connect GitHub, link an eligible repository, and activate the free Open Source plan — for a brand-new workspace or an existing one.

Activating the Plan

There are two ways to get onto the Open Source plan, depending on whether you're starting fresh or converting a workspace you already have. Both end up in the same place: a workspace on the oss plan, with at least one project bound to a verified public GitHub repository.

Binding a repository grants the plan's quota — it does not by itself make anything public. Publishing a report is a separate, explicit step; see Publishing a Report.

Eligibility rules

A repository is checked against these rules every time it's linked, and again on every subsequent re-verification (see the lifecycle section):

Rule	Requirement
Visibility	Public — private repositories are never eligible
Fork	Must not be a fork — link the original repository
Archived	Must not be archived
License	Must carry a license GitHub can identify, and it must be on the OSI-approved list below

OSI-approved licenses (by SPDX identifier):

MIT · Apache-2.0 · BSD-2-Clause · BSD-3-Clause · GPL-2.0 · GPL-3.0 · LGPL-2.1 · LGPL-3.0 · AGPL-3.0 · MPL-2.0 · EPL-2.0 · ISC · Unlicense · Zlib · BSL-1.0 · CDDL-1.0 · MS-PL · OSL-3.0 · Artistic-2.0 · NCSA · PostgreSQL · EUPL-1.2

A license file GitHub can't confidently identify (shown on GitHub as "NOASSERTION" — common for licenses like SSPL or ones with an added Commons Clause) fails this check even though the repository does have a license file. If your license isn't recognized or isn't on the list above, it isn't eligible — there's no manual override.

Two additional checks — a minimum star count and a minimum repository age — exist in the eligibility logic but are not currently enabled. If you see a star- or age-related rejection, that check has been turned on since this page was last verified; there's no way to predict the threshold in advance.

Workflow: converting an existing workspace

This is a one-time, workspace-level action, and only a workspace Owner can do it.

There's no in-app navigation link to this page yet — go there directly.

Steps

Go to https://app.qualflare.com/workspace/<your-workspace-slug>/open-source (Workspace Settings → Open Source Setup once a nav link exists).
Connect GitHub: click Connect GitHub to install the Qualflare GitHub App. This is what lets Qualflare verify a repository is eligible before granting the plan — a full-page redirect to GitHub, then back.
Link repository: enter the repository as owner/repo (e.g. vercel/next.js) and click Activate Open Source plan.
On success, your workspace's plan switches to Open Source immediately.

Activating requires an empty workspace. Every project in a workspace on the Open Source plan must be linked to a verified repository, and existing projects can't be linked retroactively — so this only works for a workspace that has zero projects yet. If you already have projects, create a fresh workspace for the open-source repository instead.

If linking fails, the form shows an inline, specific reason — see the table below for what each one means.

Workflow: starting a brand-new workspace

If you're setting up Qualflare for the first time, the "Open Source" path folds the same two steps into onboarding, in a different order: the plan is granted immediately when you choose it, and GitHub connection + repository selection happen while creating your first project, not before.

Steps

During onboarding, at the workspace-purpose step, choose Open Source ("Free plan for a public GitHub project, with a shareable report page.") instead of Team. Your workspace is granted the Open Source plan right away.
At the project step, pick a repository from the org/repo search dropdown — this only lists repositories that already pass the eligibility rules above and aren't already linked to a different project. Picking one autofills and locks the project's Name and Slug — on this plan, they're derived from the repository, not hand-typed.
If GitHub isn't connected yet, the same picker shows a Connect GitHub prompt inline, with the same eligibility checklist.

The GitHub App install scope is a real first-run trap. When installing the Qualflare GitHub App, GitHub asks whether to grant access to "All repositories" or "Only select repositories." If you choose the latter and don't explicitly include your target repository, the picker will show zero eligible repositories — not an error, just an empty list, because Qualflare can't see a repository the App was never granted access to.

Choose "All repositories," or make sure to explicitly select your repository during GitHub's install screen.

If a brand-new workspace's GitHub App install produces zero eligible repositories, onboarding shows a Back button specifically for this case, letting you return to the workspace-purpose step and choose Team instead without starting over.

Why a repository was rejected

Every failing rule is reported at once — not one at a time — so you can fix everything before resubmitting instead of hitting a new rejection on each retry.

Reason shown	What it means
The repository must be public.	The repository is private.
Forks aren't eligible — link the original repository instead.	The repository is a fork.
Add an OSI-approved open-source license to the repository.	GitHub found no license file at all.
The license must be OSI-approved (e.g. MIT, Apache-2.0, GPL, BSD, MPL-2.0).	A license exists but isn't on the approved list (see above).
The repository doesn't have enough stars yet.	The (currently disabled) star-count floor.
The repository is too new.	The (currently disabled) age floor.
"…is not visible to the Qualflare GitHub App…"	The repository isn't public, or the GitHub App wasn't granted access to it (see the install-scope callout above).
"…is already linked to another Qualflare workspace…"	Another workspace already claimed this exact repository — one repository can only ever back one workspace's plan.

Publishing a Report — the separate step that actually makes a report public
FAQ — more on rejected repos and what happens if one goes private later
Workspaces — general workspace concepts

Activating the Plan

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