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Comment by ggregoire | Hacker News Reader

I'm curious about this topic. How do you write such documents (ToS, Privacy Policy, etc)?

If you release a side project or a startup and you can't afford a lawyer like GitHub probably does, what are the solutions?

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Do what a lot of people do, find your favorites, cobble together your own and go from there. Of course a lawyer is best, but until you can pay for one and at least while things like privacy policies are important for SEO, fake it till you make it.

Of course you should actually abide by your own policies. You can even search for common phrases[0] to see how many templates are out there.

0 - https://www.google.com/search?q="We+use+regular+Malware+Scan...

Thanks, I'll probably do that.

We open-sourced all of our docs where I work. As previously noted, it's no substitute for a lawyer if something serious is really on the line, but it's probably a good place to get started. If you're not selling B2B you probably don't need to get mired down on the specifics of legality or need to have a framework to negotiate terms and policies. The biggest thing you'll want to do is set limitations on liability for usage. You'll save money giving a lawyer 80% of T&C to tune vs. having a lawyer start from a boiler plate T&C. Especially if you need to manage any vertical-specific nuances that a biz lawyer may not be specifically attuned to.

Legal: https://github.com/catalyzeio/legal Policies/Compliance: https://github.com/catalyzeio/policies

There are a bunch of good legal doc services these days. For most company stuff, Clerky has some good docs (hiring people, hiring a contractor, etc).

For ToS specifically, termsfeed.com is pretty good.

Thanks!

I've seen several SaaS using iubenda.com for ToS and Privacy Policy. Do you have an opinion on this service?

If you cant afford a lawyer then you probably cant afford the side project. Some things you simply get what you pay for. Start an LLC, pay a lawyer a couple hundred bucks and you'll be set for quite a while.

A side project doesn't have to be an LLC. Majority of most basic web services require some sort of Terms of Service but if you're only building it for fun paying a couple of hundred bucks for a lawyer to write up terms of service no one cares about doesn't seem cost effective.

If you ever want to make 1$ on it, its worth having a lawyer make sure you won't lose your hat.

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