Zed new terms required to be 18 years old
zed.dev
zed.dev
---
Our email yesterday was imprecise relative to our actual new Terms. To be specific:
- You must be at least 18 years old to use the Service (Zed’s AI-enabled software-as-a-service offering, including features like account creation/sign in, Zed Free and Zed Pro, and collaboration). See https://zed.dev/terms#21-eligibility. We set the threshold at 18 due to children's data privacy obligations under COPPA, equivalent international frameworks, and an increasing number of state and regional laws that extend protections to anyone under 18. Those regulations require parental consent verification, age-gated data handling, and separate retention policies for minors. Building and maintaining that infrastructure is a real cost for a small team, and getting it wrong carries regulatory risk. Setting the line at 18 lets us maintain a single privacy framework for all account holders without carve-outs.
- Zed's Software (open source code editing software) is governed by our open source licenses. In cases where the open source license can govern, it will over the Terms. See https://zed.dev/terms#24-restrictions.
If you have questions, reply to this email or reach us at legal@zed.dev.
---
> By agreeing to these Terms, Customer represents and warrants to Zed that: (a) Customer is at least 18 years old
> By downloading and using Zed, you agree to its terms and conditions.
That links to: https://zed.dev/terms
> (“Zed,” “we,” or “us”) and our website at www.zed.dev, along with our downloadable Zed software (the “Software”) and related subscription service (the “Service”).
Very clearly draws a distinction between the editor (the "Software") and their subscription service (the "Service")
> Customer must be at least 18 years old to use the Service.
Is very clearly referencing the subscription service (the "Service") and not the editor (the "Software")
By agreeing to these Terms, Customer represents and warrants to Zed that: (a) Customer is at least 18 years old
these Terms of Service, the Data Processing Addendum (“DPA”), available upon request, and Zed’s Privacy Policy
> Customer must be at least 18 years old to use the Service. By agreeing to these Terms, Customer represents and warrants to Zed that: (a) Customer is at least 18 years old
THE SERVICE
> (“Zed,” “we,” or “us”) and our website at www.zed.dev, along with our downloadable Zed software (the “Software”) and related subscription service (the “Service”).
The service == subscription service.
Those terms could've just been, "you must be 18+ years old to use the service", and everything would be just fine. But they're not.
"The Terms" is defined to include the ToS document found at https://zed.dev/terms, which are the very terms you need to agree to if you want to comply with https://zed.dev/download. If you cannot accept "the Terms", you cannot download and use Zed. And you cannot agree to "the Terms" if you're under 18 years old. This is not complicated, it should not be difficult to understand.
"Customer must be at least 18 years old to use the Service"
this pretty clearly refers to the subscription service and not to the 'downloadable software' or source code
> By agreeing to these Terms, Customer represents and warrants to Zed that: (a) Customer is at least 18 years old
"these Terms" are the terms you need to agree to in order to download the editor. You can't agree to them if you're under 18.
By accessing or using the Service, you (“You” or “Customer”) agree to these Terms of Service, the Data Processing Addendum (“DPA”), available upon request, and Zed’s Privacy Policy (collectively, the “Terms”).
If you are not eligible, or do not agree to the Terms, you may not access or use the Service.
pretty clearly again referring to only 'the Service' -- which does not include their website or app
except i'd still say that even if you "agree to the terms" most of them still apply conditionally upon using the service, and the language about 18 is also specifically about the service
Really should have called the AI offerings "Zed AI" so as to differentiate it more and avoid confusion like this.
I have tried zed multiple times and always uninstalled it after a few days because of the ugly font rendering, slow response time (!), high memory usage (!!) and being very buggy in general. And don't even get me started on their AI-first shenanigans.
This is on Linux, maybe it works better on other platforms.
If you're using Windows (+ WSL) then yes, there's a hunch of memory issues currently. Apart from Windows I've never issues though, especially seeing as how intellij indexing takes >1 min and hogs my memory during that period.
The only reason I'm not switching is because Zed's vim bindings are aaalmost perfect. I did not like Vim Mode in VSC or intellij IDE's since it's another keymap I have to learn next to my nvim setup
Maybe this is a vim thing? What do emacs and vscode users feel about zed?
I can't believe the latency of browser based editor is acceptable to people
Tried it, it was the worse experience I had with an editor since I started my career… then I tried it again because maybe they figured it out… it’s still bad.
It is slow, it's missing features and it is buggy.
It’s good. Launches from anywhere from cli with just ‘zed .’ (No logs and artifacts that hold up the terminal). Multiple instances without worry (unlike PyCharm I used before).
It’s good to the point I keep checking to see if there is a “pro” plan, but there isn’t. They just have AI subscriptions.
I have opened at all times at least 3-4 medium sized front-end projects and at least one large python project and never had memory issues.
Debugging is good. I'd love to see integrated test runners.
I also wish the collaboration was more relevant and fleshed out, but no one I know uses it anyway.
There have been recent changes to the font rendering, it now looks good on my 1440p monitor - when I first tried, it was blurry and instantly gave me a headache. It does seem strange to me that *font rendering* of all things is what a text editor has trouble with. Precise font rendering should be table stakes here.
As for performance/memory usage, it's been top-notch for me on both Linux and macOS.
I had originally switched to try and get away from Microsoft's "only focus on AI features" trend in VSCode, but it seems like Zed has fallen into the same trap.
Very fast but not enough features to use on a daily basis.
And they lack some extensions I love in VSCode such as Markdown All In One and GitLens. They have a big battle against the large ecosystem of VSCode extensions.
And then there's JetBrains which is on another level of refactoring/features.
The macOS version is where they've invested the most optimizations for sure. None of the issues you've described occur on there. Fwiw, I've been daily driving the editor on my mac for about a year with almost no complaints.
That's gonna be a no from me, dawg.
This is hilarious. But technically an LLM will read the whole README simultaneously.
Zed’s AI-enabled software-as-a-service offering (the “Service”)
Customer must be at least 18 years old to use the Service. You must be 18 or older to use ZedAge requirement. You must be 18 or older to use Zed’s AI-enabled software-as-a-service offering (the “Service").
Now here's an area where one of those newfangled large language models actually could do some good: create a spelling checker which doesn't gleefully replace somewhat misspelled or 'mis-swiped' words with correctly spelled but contextually clearly nonsensical ones.
By agreeing to these Terms, Customer represents and warrants to Zed that: (a) Customer is at least 18 years old
> (“Zed,” “we,” or “us”) and our website at www.zed.dev, along with our downloadable Zed software (the “Software”) and related subscription service (the “Service”).
Very clearly draws a distinction between the editor (the "Software") and their subscription service (the "Service")
> Customer must be at least 18 years old to use the Service.
Is very clearly referencing the subscription service (the "Service") and not the editor (the "Software")
I did not quote "Customer must be at least 18 years old to use the Service" because I, like you, don't find it to be a problem. I don't know why you're saying it back to me. I quoted a different sentence, namely "By agreeing to these Terms, Customer represents and warrants to Zed that: (a) Customer is at least 18 years old", because I think that sentence is a problem. I would appreciate if you would discuss the part of the ToS which I referenced instead of an irrelevant part which I haven't brought up.