Terms of Use and Privacy Policy

[Zwyx]

There are often two aspects of open source applications:

• their source code,
• their website hosting a running version of the app.

Some example:

• PrivateBin (source, hosted version)
• Squoosh (source, hosted version)

For the source code, we have to choose a licence. And that's easy thanks to choosealicense.com and opensource.guide. (Thank you!)

But for the hosted app, understanding our obligations is much more difficult! Do we need Terms of Use? Do we need a Privacy Policy?

I wish their would be something as simple as an "MIT license for Terms of Use": something simple, to limit the liability of the developer, basically saying "This app is provided 'as is', I don't guarantee anything."

I asked two questions on Stack Exchange, but the answers don't satisfy me. It shows there is a lack of simple terms and privacy policies that people could use when they put an open source work online.

• PrivateBin doesn't have terms of use or a privacy policy.
• Squoosh doesn't have terms but has a privacy policy (although very simple: it doesn't mention that IP addresses might be collected by the hosting provider).

The question also applies for documentations of open source libraries:

• react.dev has terms of use and a privacy policy (from Meta, probably much more complex than necessary),
• vuejs.org has none of them.

Would it be possible to add to choosealicense.com or opensource.guide, some documentation and templates of simple Terms of Use and Privacy Policies, for open source developers to use when they host their projects?

[mlinksva]

Interesting idea but I think out of scope for this project. I'll leave open for awhile as I'd be curious about pointer to projects that have attempted to do a minimal ToU intended to be used as-is or customized.

There are open source web apps that ship with default terms, but off the top of my head, they are customized for the application, e.g., https://github.com/discourse/discourse/blob/d0d659e7330e1221f57cf6202a8de5c1604556f6/config/locales/server.en.yml#L4583

[Zwyx]

Thank you for your reply! I haven't found any such projects, so I created one: https://github.com/Zwyx/minimal-terms-of-use-and-privacy-policy

At the moment, it contains simple Terms of Use and a Privacy Policy, which I think are enough to cover our bases, although I'm not a lawyer.

If people knowledgeable in this area would accept to contribute, it would be amazing!

If you know such people, please feel free to point them to this project :slightly_smiling_face:

[mlinksva]

Good luck!

I should've but did not recall when replying above that @kemitchell created reusable terms of service, privacy, and DMCA. https://writing.kemitchell.com/2020/05/17/Turnstile-1e1d might be a good starting explanatory blog post.

[Zwyx]

Oh it looks exactly what I was looking for! Thank you! They're a bit more complex as they include parts about account creation and content sharing, so I'll see with Kyle if we can make these optional.

Thanks again!