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Draft pending counsel review · Last updated 2 September 2026 · not a final contract

Terms of use

These Terms of use (“Terms”) govern access to and use of Openfork at openfork.co and related services (the “Service”). By creating an account or using the Service, you agree to these Terms. If you do not agree, do not use the Service.

1. Who we are

Openfork hosts structured idea documents and a public record of versions, proposals, builds, forks, and related activity — for any craft, including startups. Openfork is not a broker-dealer, investment adviser, crowdfunding portal, payment institution, or law firm. Nothing on the Service is an offer of securities, investment advice, or legal advice.

2. Eligibility and accounts

  • You must be able to form a binding contract in your jurisdiction.
  • Sign-in is via supported social OAuth providers only. Openfork does not store passwords.
  • You are responsible for activity under your account and for keeping linked identities under your control.
  • You may not impersonate another person, evade a suspension, or create accounts for abuse.

3. The Service

Subject to these Terms, Openfork provides tools to:

  • create draft, private, and public idea documents;
  • comment, suggest edits, attach builds, fork ideas, and export public history;
  • signal non-financial interest, Amplify reach pledges, and use paid Matching software;
  • request Concierge pointers to independent legal resources (not advice).

Features may change. We may suspend or discontinue parts of the Service with notice where practical.

4. Visibility, licenses, and your content

4.1 Your rights

You retain whatever rights you already had in content you submit (“User Content”). You are responsible for that content and for having the rights needed to submit it.

4.2 License to Openfork

You grant Openfork a worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free license to host, store, reproduce, display, distribute, diff, index, and export User Content as needed to operate, secure, and improve the Service, including public pages, search, sitemaps, and exports described in-product.

4.3 Public ideas

Unless a page says otherwise, public idea text is licensed under CC BY 4.0. Making an idea public is one-way for the citable record: public cannot become private.

4.4 Private ideas

Private ideas are shown only to you and people you invite — not end-to-end encryption. Collaborators are not under an Openfork NDA; arrange confidentiality off-platform if you need it. Invites are not a license to republish someone else’s private idea.

5. Acceptable use

You agree not to:

  • violate law, or post illegal, harmful, or deceptive content;
  • harass, threaten, dox, or attack people rather than ideas;
  • interfere with the Service, scrape abusively, or bypass rate limits or access controls;
  • imply Openfork is raising capital, brokering deals, or giving professional advice;
  • use Matching or Concierge to solicit investors or represent an Openfork introduction as a regulated placement.

See also the Community guidelines.

6. Matching, Amplify, interest, and Concierge

  • Matching is paid software that ranks public profiles people opted into. Openfork is not a party after an intro is accepted and does not introduce investors.
  • Amplify is a non-binding public reach pledge. It does not grant merge rights or boost public search. Follow-through URLs are claimed by the pledger; Openfork stores them and does not fetch them.
  • Interest signals (Watching, I’d use this, I’d help build) are non-financial and not investment.
  • Concierge is House sharing legal-resource pointers. It is not legal advice, not a cut of anyone’s company, and not investor intros.

Paid features may be billed through Paystack or another processor. Prices, currency, and taxes are shown at checkout. Fees for completed Matching packs are generally non-refundable except where required by law or stated at purchase.

7. Moderation and enforcement

House may hide, tombstone, rate-limit, block, or terminate access for content or conduct that violates these Terms or the guidelines, or to protect the Service or others. Hidden items may leave a public tombstone rather than a silent rewrite.

8. Third-party services

Sign-in and payments rely on third parties (for example GitHub, X, Instagram, TikTok, Paystack). Their terms and privacy policies apply to their processing. Openfork is not responsible for third-party outages or policy changes.

9. Disclaimers

THE SERVICE IS PROVIDED “AS IS” AND “AS AVAILABLE.” TO THE MAXIMUM EXTENT PERMITTED BY LAW, OPENFORK DISCLAIMS WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE, AND NON-INFRINGEMENT. We do not warrant that the Service will be uninterrupted, error-free, or that private content cannot be disclosed if systems are compromised or if we are legally compelled.

10. Limitation of liability

TO THE MAXIMUM EXTENT PERMITTED BY LAW, OPENFORK AND ITS OPERATORS WILL NOT BE LIABLE FOR INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL, CONSEQUENTIAL, OR PUNITIVE DAMAGES, OR FOR LOST PROFITS, DATA, OR GOODWILL. OUR TOTAL LIABILITY FOR CLAIMS RELATING TO THE SERVICE WILL NOT EXCEED THE GREATER OF (A) THE AMOUNTS YOU PAID TO OPENFORK FOR THE SERVICE IN THE THREE MONTHS BEFORE THE CLAIM OR (B) USD 50 (or local equivalent).

11. Indemnity

You will defend and indemnify Openfork against claims arising from your User Content, your use of the Service, or your breach of these Terms, except to the extent caused by Openfork’s willful misconduct.

12. Termination

You may stop using the Service at any time. We may suspend or terminate access for breach or risk. Provisions that by nature should survive (including licenses already granted for public records, disclaimers, and limitations) will survive termination. Public citable history may remain available as described in the Privacy notice.

13. Changes

We may update these Terms. Material changes will be dated on this page. Continued use after the effective date constitutes acceptance of the updated Terms.

14. Governing law

These Terms are governed by the laws of the Federal Republic of Nigeria, without regard to conflict-of-law rules, except where mandatory consumer protections in your country cannot be waived. Courts in Nigeria will have exclusive jurisdiction, subject to those mandatory protections.

15. Contact

Questions about these Terms: use in-product House channels where available, or email legal@openfork.co.

This page is a dated Draft until counsel revises it. Do not treat it as final legal advice or as a substitute for a counsel-approved agreement.