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Ask HN: any boilerplate ToS philosophically equivalent to the MIT license?
I like the MIT license for being straightforward and simple for code. It's easy to slap on any code that you want to share without worrying too much about what's done with it. For me, it means "here is it. This is my code, but feel free to do your thing"
So I'm wondering if there's something in the same spirit for Terms of Services. I'm afraid ToS have to be more tailored to specific sites though.
Is there anything you typically use for services that you want to share without the burden of committing to a specific conduct? Something like "Use at your own risk"?
Thanks!
- malandrew 15y agoAutomattic's ToS and PP are licensed under CC. You can use them as a starting point. http://en.wordpress.com/tos/ http://en.wordpress.com/tos/ While you certainly can save money editing your own ToS and PP, be aware that this is a time consuming process. I've worked on ours (It's not yet done, but when it is it will be released under the same license as Automattic's) Be sure to read Antone Johnson's answers about ToS and PP on Quora: http://www.quora.com/Is-it-a-reasonable-hack-to-copy-paste-a-similar-companys-Terms-of-Use-Privacy-Policy-change-names-and-edit-a-bit-vs-spending-legal-in-alpha-stage http://www.quora.com/Is-it-a-reasonable-hack-to-copy-paste-a... http://www.quora.com/What-are-some-ways-to-prevent-and-or-deal-with-legal-issues-that-arise-from-actions-of-users-on-user-generated-content-websites http://www.quora.com/What-are-some-ways-to-prevent-and-or-de... http://www.quora.com/How-do-I-find-a-specialist-to-write-a-Terms-of-Service-and-other-legal-documents-for-a-website http://www.quora.com/How-do-I-find-a-specialist-to-write-a-T... FINALLY, MAKE SURE YOU GET A REAL LAWYER TO REVIEW WHATEVER YOU DRAFT BEFORE YOU USE IT. Ask them the price to draft one for you for scratch, then use that to negotiate a better price to just review the one you already wrote. You might want to use version control with Automattic's ToS and PP, so that they can see what you've changed. [DISCLAIMER: I am not a lawyer. This post does not constitute legal advice. Use at your own risk]
- Timothee 15y agoThanks a lot for your answer! The links are very useful, though sadly they point towards custom ToS and privacy policy. I expected that, but it's an extra step to do for projects that might not always be worth it. That's why the MIT license is always nice on the code side…
- malandrew 15y agoUnfortunately the legal documents suck hard. Most legal documents were written for lawyers and courts to execute and only incidentally for humans to read. Our ToS, when I'm finally done with it will have quite a few parts which may be more use to you than the Wordpress one. Wordpress focuses on a product with a tenant structure, where each tenant "owns" their domain. Our product is more like Twitter, Foursquare or Quora, where you have users in a shared space. Check out my profile for my company domain. The ToS and PP should be posted by the end of December when we go public with our product.