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Terms of service

All the terms that you agree to when you sign up for The Mitten Project.

Last updated: November 30, 2023

From everyone at The Mitten Project, thank you for using our products! We build them to help you do your best work. Because we don’t know every one of our customers personally, we have to put in place some Terms of Service to help keep the ship afloat.

When we say “Company”, “we”, “our”, or “us” in this document, we are referring to The Mitten Project

When we say “Services”, we mean our websites, including themittenproject.com, and any product created and maintained by The Mitten Project. That includes content (all versions), events, and networking, whether delivered within a web browser, desktop application, mobile application, or another format.

When we say “You” or “your”, we are referring to the people or organizations that own an account with one or more of our Services.

We may update these Terms of Service ("Terms") in the future. Typically these changes have been to clarify some of these terms by linking to an expanded related policy. Whenever we make a significant change to our policies, we will refresh the date at the top of this page and take any other appropriate steps to notify account holders.

When you use our Services, now or in the future, you are agreeing to the latest Terms. There may be times where we do not exercise or enforce a right or provision of the Terms; however, that does not mean we are waiving that right or provision. These Terms do contain a limitation of our liability.

If you violate any of the Terms, we may terminate your account and relationship with The Mitten Project. That’s a broad statement and it means you need to place a lot of trust in us. We do our best to deserve that trust by being open about how we work and keeping an open door to your feedback (info@themittenproject.com).

Account Terms

  1. 1. You are responsible for maintaining the security of your account and password and for ensuring that any of your users do the same. The Company cannot and will not be liable for any loss or damage from your failure to comply with this security obligation.
  2. 2. You may not use the Services for any purposes that are illegal in your jurisdiction, and you may not permit others to do so, either.
  3. 3. You are responsible for all content posted to and activity that occurs under your account, including content posted by and activity of any users in your account.
  4. 4. You must be a human. Accounts registered by “bots” or other automated methods are not permitted.

Payment, Refunds, and Plan Changes

If you are using one of our free Services, it is really free: we do not ask you for your credit card and we do not sell your data or information.

Cancellation and Termination

  1. 1. You are solely responsible for properly canceling your account by emailing us info@themittenproject.com.
  2. 2. We have the right to suspend or terminate your account and refuse any and all current or future use of our Services for any reason at any time. Suspension means you will not be able to access the account or any content in the account. Termination will furthermore result in the deletion of your account or your access to your account, and the forfeiture and relinquishment of all content in your account. We also reserve the right to refuse the use of the Services to anyone for any reason at any time. There are some things we staunchly stand against and this clause is how we exercise that stance.
  3. 3. Verbal, physical, written or other abuse (including threats of abuse or retribution) of a Company employee or officer will result in immediate account termination.

Modifications to the Service and Prices

We make a promise to our customers to support our Services. That means when it comes to security, privacy, and customer support, we will continue to maintain any legacy Services. Sometimes it becomes technically impossible to continue a feature or we redesign a part of our Services because we think it could be better or we decide to close new signups of a product. We reserve the right at any time to modify or discontinue, temporarily or permanently, any part of our Services with or without notice.

Uptime, Security, and Privacy

  1. 1. Your use of the Services is at your sole risk. We provide these Services on an “as is” and “as available” basis. We do not offer service-level agreements for most of our Services — but do take uptime of our applications seriously.
  2. 2. We take many measures to protect and secure your data through backups, redundancies, and encryption. We enforce encryption for data transmission from the public Internet. There are some edge cases where we may send your data through our network unencrypted. Please contact us directly if you believe there has been a security incident or threat.
  3. 3. When you use our Services, you entrust us with your data. We take that trust to heart. You agree that The Mitten Project may process your data as described in our Privacy policy and for no other purpose. We as humans can access your data for the following reasons:
    • - To help you with requests you make.
    • - On the rare occasions when an error occurs that stops an automated process partway through. When we can fix the issue and restart automated processing without looking at any personal data, we do. In rare cases, we have to look at a minimum amount of personal data to fix the issue. In these rare cases, we aim to fix the root cause to prevent the errors from recurring.
    • - To safeguard The Mitten Project. We’ll look at logs and metadata as part of our work to ensure the security of your data and the Services as a whole. If necessary, we may also access accounts as part of an abuse report investigation.
    • - To the extent required by applicable law. As a US based organization with all data infrastructure located in the US, we only preserve or share customer data if compelled by a US government authority with a legally binding order or proper request under the Stored Communications Act, or in limited circumstances in the event of an emergency request. If a non-US authority approaches The Mitten Project for assistance, our default stance is to refuse unless the order has been approved by the US government, which compels us to comply through procedures outlined in an established mutual legal assistance treaty or agreement mechanism.
  4. 5. We use third party vendors and hosting partners to provide the necessary hardware, software, networking, storage, and related technology required to run the Services, including but not limited to Amazon Web Services, Inc.
  5. 6. Under the California Consumer Privacy Act (“CCPA”), The Mitten Project is a “service provider”, not a “business” or “third party”, with respect to your use of the Services. That means we process any data you share with us only for the purpose you signed up for and as described in these Terms, the Privacy policy. We do not retain, use, disclose, or sell any of that information for any other commercial purposes unless we have your explicit permission. And on the flip-side, you agree to comply with your requirements under the CCPA and not use The Mitten Projects’s Services in a way that violates the regulations.

Copyright and Content Ownership

  1. 1. All content posted on the Services must comply with U.S. copyright law.
  2. 2. You give us a limited license to use the content posted by you in order to provide the Services to the community.
  3. 3. We do not pre-screen content, but we reserve the right (but not the obligation) in our sole discretion to refuse or remove any content that is available via the Service.
  4. 4. The Mitten Project owns all right, title, and interest in and to the Services, including all intellectual property rights therein, and you obtain no ownership rights in the Services as a result of your use. You may not duplicate, copy, or reuse any portion of the HTML, CSS, JavaScript, or visual design elements without express written permission from the Company. You must request permission to use the The Mitten Project’s logos or any Service logos for promotional purposes. We reserve the right to rescind any permissions if you violate these Terms.
  5. 5. You agree not to reproduce, duplicate, copy, sell, resell or exploit any portion of the Services, use of the Services, or access to the Services without the express written permission of The Mitten Project.

Features and Bugs

We design our Services with care, based on our own experience and the experiences of users who share their time and feedback. However, there is no such thing as a service that pleases everybody. We make no guarantees that our Services will meet your specific requirements or expectations.

We also test all of our features extensively before shipping them. As with any software, our Services inevitably have some bugs. We track the bugs reported to us and work through priority ones, especially any related to security or privacy. Not all reported bugs will get fixed and we don’t guarantee completely error-free Services.

Liability

We mention liability throughout these Terms but to put it all in one section:

You expressly understand and agree that The Mitten Project shall not be liable, in law or in equity, to you or to any third party for any direct, indirect, incidental, lost profits, special, consequential, punitive or exemplary damages, including, but not limited to, damages for loss of profits, goodwill, use, data or other intangible losses (even if The Mitten Project has been advised of the possibility of such damages), resulting from: (i) the use or the inability to use the Services; (ii) the cost of procurement of substitute goods and services resulting from any goods, data, information or services purchased or obtained or messages received or transactions entered into through or from the Services; (iii) unauthorized access to or alteration of your transmissions or data; (iv) statements or conduct of any third party on the service; (v) or any other matter relating to these Terms or the Services, whether as a breach of contract, tort (including negligence whether active or passive), or any other theory of liability.

In other words: choosing to use our Services does mean you are making a bet on us. If the bet does not work out, that’s on you, not us. We do our darnedest to be as safe a bet as possible through careful management of the project; investments in security, infrastructure, and talent. If you choose to use our Services, thank you for betting on us.

If you have a question about any of these Terms, please contact us.

Adapted from the Basecamp open-source policies / CC BY 4.0