What to write in the 'Terms of Service' and 'Privacy Policy' of my open source project?
What to write in the 'Terms of Service' and 'Privacy Policy' of my open source project?
I don't know what to write in both of these pages before I publish my project. I would greatly appreciate if someone would help me in this regard as I know nothing about the legal side of hosting open source apps nor do I want to spend too much time on this.
For context, my project is a web app that I specifically made sure to be as private as possible. All data generated by the user is made to be completely stored locally in the browser with no trackers or analytics installed. The data can be modified and deleted as per the user's will along with the ability to import and export the data as JSON files. A local account is required to save progress else the data will be wiped on exiting the site and the core functionalities of the site do not depend on whether an account has been created or not. The only privacy risk would be occasional loading of external resources like image links which I couldn't find a viable alternative to.
Frankly this is just a small side FOSS project which I do not intend to capitalise on. I still want to mention the TOS and the Privacy Policy just in case, but I couldn't be bothered to write all this legal matter by hand.
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I guess LLMs are OK at this as most ToS and Privacy Policies have quite fixed formats.
And if you decide to use an LLM, don’t settle for the first version. Ask thoughtful questions, request relevant improvements, and spend some time with this document. The first version tends to have a bunch of flaws, mistakes and oversights, and the LLM might even be able to find and fix them if you tell it to do that. After a few iterations of ironing out the wrinkles, you should show the document to a real lawyer just in case.
Repeated revisions with LLM of course is needed. For a small side FOSS project, the TOS and privacy policy is just in case. Plus the OP isn't intended to make money off of it. The risk of someone going after OP is really low. I don't really think OP need to get a real lawyer to do it.
Yeah, those services can be really expensive, so justifying expenses like that might be hard in a small project.
If OP really needs it, law school students might be a good way to get cheaper rates. AFAIK, TOS and Privacy Policy are basically contracts, and every law student should know how to.