Ask HN: How did you write your side project's ToS?

16 points·CoreSet··3 comments

I have a side project / lifestyle business I'm launching in a few weeks and wanted to see what resources other HNers have used to write a basic ToS?

The project has no users or revenue, so I'd really just like to homebrew something basic for the moment.

Thanks!

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Basecamp has open-sourced their policies under CC BY 4.0, which means you can use those as long as you include the attribution: https://github.com/basecamp/policies

When/if you reach a certain scale, it will make sense to find a lawyer who can customize those policies for your business (or maybe even draft new ones).

Do you need any? What do you want those ToS to achieve? If you want to use them to prevent users doing something nefarious, do you think they'll actually care?

Certain markets require you to have ToS with specific information if you're for example selling something. But if you're not selling anything and offering the service on a "free without warranty" basis, why bother?

If it matters, hire a lawyer. It's a good test. Rolling your own TOS provides more opportunity to avoid the hard work of finding users and generating revenue. And if you really need TOS, then you really need a lawyer too. Enforcing TOS is an even bigger distraction from business fundamentals than writing them. Good luck.

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