# Create your fork

Consul Democracy git repo is hosted at Github.com, we recommend using it for your fork's repo to make things easier. But you can use any other service like Bitbucket or Gitlab if you want to, just don't forget to put a reference link back to Consul Democracy on the footer to comply with project's license (AGPLv3).

1. [Register a user account on Github](https://github.com/signup) if you don't have one.

2. [Create an Organization](https://docs.github.com/en/organizations/collaborating-with-groups-in-organizations/creating-a-new-organization-from-scratch) on Github with the name of your city or the organization that's going to use Consul Democracy. **This is not mandatory**, but it will help understand the fork's purpose and future contributions by other users.

3. [Fork Consul Democracy](https://docs.github.com/en/pull-requests/collaborating-with-pull-requests/working-with-forks/fork-a-repo) using the **fork** button on the top right corner at <https://github.com/consuldemocracy/consuldemocracy>

4. [Clone your fork repository](https://docs.github.com/en/repositories/creating-and-managing-repositories/cloning-a-repository) on to your computer.

## Why make code public?

We strongly recommend making code public for multiple reasons:

- **Transparency**: It should be part of the culture of public entities that adopt Consul Democracy, as well as any organization or group.
- **Support**: If you need technical help, both community and Consul Democracy core team will be able to understand and advice by easily seeing involved code.
- **Collaboration**: By other professionals, citizens, etc...
- Last but not least, Consul Democracy is distributed under the **[AGPLv3](https://github.com/consuldemocracy/consuldemocracy/blob/master/LICENSE-AGPLv3.txt) license** that commands to publish source code.
