Ask HN: How do you draft the usage terms and conditions for a side project?
I'm working a side project that would probably earn me some money. I've seen most of such "indie" projects having some sort of "terms and conditions" page. While I know that most companies would hire a lawyer to draft these, I'm not sure what's best for me.
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Here is my process:
1. Search my competitors and collect 3-4 ToS pages
2. Read each of them and copy their paragraphs into mine
3. Re-word some to make sure my ToS is unique. If something is too confusing or too much, delete.
4. Stop worry about it until my startup gets some traction.
The whole process should not take more than 2-3 hours. If you pay $$ or take days on ToS while your startup is not even getting traction, you're doing something seriously wrong (in term of time spent).
Github exists for coders, people are massaging it for other projects. You can create a campaign for an open source T&C I am building a platform for anyone to contribute to projects. We are disrupting the future of work. PLease check out www.crowdraising.co/metacampaign and there is an explainer video that does the job https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w3QT4lqco8M
Automattic publishes their WordPress.com Terms of Service under a Creative Commons Sharealike license, meaning you can copy, redistribute and build upon the material for any (including commercial) purpose.
Might be a good start for a Saas: https://en.wordpress.com/tos/
I'm also interested in this. I also hope to start a side project, likely a saas business.
I'm worried in case of data loss, being hacked or site instability, I will get myself sued. I want to state the possibility of those unpredicted events in the terms and conditions.
If you have friend well versed in law /lawyer get them to help. For starting out legalzoom should help