996icu/996.ICU

A protest repository documenting the "996" overwork culture in Chinese tech companies — not a software project.

What it is

A campaign repository, not a codebase. "996" refers to the work schedule of 9am–9pm, 6 days a week, observed at many Chinese tech employers. The repo's name — "Work by 996, sick in ICU" — captures the protest framing. The README serves as a hub for press coverage, the project's website (996.icu), the "Anti 996 License" (a software license that restricts use by companies that violate labor laws), and a community Slack. Stars and forks are themselves the political signal — the entire repo's purpose is to surface the issue on GitHub's trending charts.

Key features

The "Anti 996 License" — a software license that restricts use by entities operating under 996 work schedules.
Curated press-coverage links across English, Chinese, and Spanish outlets.
Translation tracks (Chinese version maintained alongside English).
996.icu companion site with the campaign materials.
Open and intentionally noisy issue tracker — issues are part of the protest surface area, not bug reports.

Tech stack

Markdown content + a license file. No code.
The companion site lives at 996.icu separately.

When to reach for it

You're researching Chinese tech labor conditions and want a canonical primary-source community archive.
You're considering adopting the Anti 996 License for your own project (with awareness of its enforceability questions).
You're studying GitHub-as-a-protest-medium — this repo is the textbook case.

When not to reach for it

You're looking for code or a working software project.
You need a court-enforceable license for your own software — the Anti 996 License's legal status is contested.
You want active campaign management — the repo's last push was August 2025 and the campaign's center of gravity has shifted off-platform.

Maturity signal

276k stars, 20k forks — a level of attention almost no commercial repo achieves, but driven by political signalling rather than usage. 16,692 open issues is the highest in this corpus and reflects the issue tracker's protest function. Last push August 2025 indicates the campaign is in long-tail maintenance mode; the original viral moment was 2019. The repo persists as historical documentation more than active organizing.

Alternatives

The MIT, Apache 2.0, GPL-3.0 license families — use when you want an enforceable license with established case law.
Labor-rights NGO trackers — use when you want continuously updated reporting on labor conditions, not a 2019 snapshot.
Coder-996/996.ICU-Crawler and other downstream projects — use when you want machine-readable spinoffs.

Notes

This is the rare top-starred repo with no software inside. License is NOASSERTION because the repo bundles the Anti 996 License but doesn't apply it to anything. Anyone re-indexing this list (or training models on GitHub) should know that the stars represent political solidarity, not code adoption — naive popularity-as-quality heuristics overcount this repo's relevance to software discovery.

Wiki: 996icu/996.ICU