Are private repositories really private - can Atlassian publish code from bitbucket?

[ronbo]

I'm really happy with bitbucket and the free private repositories. If my needs expanded I'd like to upgrade my account. But this blog post that's pretty popular now, about the bitbucket terms of service does make it sound as if Atlassian has the right to publish our private code, keep it if we delete and then publish it and all sorts of possibilities I'd like to understand better.

Is this a misundertanding of the terms of service? How private are private repositories - can they be legally be published at will? What about paid accounts? Are deleted repositories kept somewhere and do you have the right to publish them at a later date?

Thanks for any clarity you can give on this!

[virginia_badenhope · Accepted solution]

The Bitbucket terms of service are not intended to give Atlassian the right to publish or publicly disclose the contents of private repositories. This applies whether it is a free or paid account. In terms of deleted repositories, we do take weekly snapshots but delete them after 1 week.

[virginia_badenhope]

I forgot to mention that I'm an attorney in the Atlassian legal department.

[Martin Andersson]

Virginia. I read your answer. Then I read that blog post. Your answer suck, big time. I wonder if they pay you to talk that smoothly. What "intentions" do you guys really have? Me? I'm outta here.

[twong_atlassian]

Hi Martin,
I've converted your answer to a comment to more accurately reflect the content of your message.

Was there a particular issue you had with Virginia's response or with the TOS? If so, I can forward your question to the appropriate people or possibly present you with resources that might help--That being said, perhaps your query would be best as a new question to the community so that your question might be more searchable/discoverable by the community.

Tim

[ronbo]

thanks for getting to this - very helpful answers :)

[twong_atlassian]

Thanks Ron! I'm definitely not a lawyer, but I'll bring it to the attention to people who know more about this stuff than I.