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Terms of service

Effective 2026-10-15. These terms are between you and Late Summer Labs ("we") and govern your use of the hosted service at openpreference.org. By creating an account or registering a client you agree to them. The OPI specifications are published separately under CC-BY-4.0; these terms cover the hosted service only.

1. What you are getting

openpreference.org is the reference implementation of the Open Preference Initiative specifications, which are drafts. The service is provided free of charge so that people can use it and implementers can test against it. It may change as the specifications change, and we may suspend or discontinue it. We will give at least 30 days' notice of discontinuation by email and on the site, during which you can export your data.

There is no service-level commitment. We run it carefully, with monitoring and nightly backups, but it is operated by a small team and may be unavailable at times.

2. Your account

  • You must be at least 16 years old.
  • One account per person. Choose a handle you are entitled to use; we may reclaim handles that impersonate others or infringe trademarks.
  • Passkeys are your credentials. Keep the devices that hold them secure and register more than one so you are not locked out. Email sign-in links are a recovery path; keep that address current.
  • You are responsible for what is done through your account and for the preferences you publish.

3. Your preferences

You own the preferences you store. You grant us the limited permission needed to store them, sign them and serve them to the requesters you have enabled, at the tiers you have chosen, and to keep encrypted backups. That permission ends when you delete the data or your account, except for copies in backups until they expire and copies already fetched by requesters.

Preferences you enable at the public tier are published to the internet. Do not store anything you would not want public at that tier. Do not store other people's personal data in your preferences.

4. Acceptable use

You may not use the service to:

  • send spam or unsolicited messages, or register accounts in bulk;
  • fetch, scrape or retain other users' preferences beyond what the access tier and your authorization allow;
  • misrepresent who you are or what you will do with data, including in a client's purpose statement;
  • circumvent rate limits, tier restrictions, consent screens or the trust registry;
  • probe, scan or attack the service, or interfere with other users; good-faith security research reported to us privately is welcome;
  • store or publish content that is unlawful, that infringes others' rights, or that you do not have the right to share.

We may remove content or suspend accounts that breach these rules, and will tell you why unless the law prevents it.

5. Developer clients

If you register an OAuth client:

  • The purpose statement you register is shown to the people whose data you read and must be truthful and kept current.
  • You may read only the preference types your credential or authorization covers, and only for the purpose and retention period you declared. The retention period you declare is a commitment to the user.
  • Keep client secrets confidential; rotate them if exposed.
  • Every client-tier and user-tier read is logged to the subject's Activity page with your purpose.
  • Client-tier access requires listing on our trust registry. Listing is at our discretion, based on verification of domain control and other categories, and may be revoked. The registry asserts only what its verification records say; it is not an endorsement.
  • You are responsible for complying with the laws that apply to your use of the data you receive.

6. Our commitments

These are binding on us for the hosted service:

  • No advertising, no tracking, no sale or brokering of your data.
  • Data minimisation: we store what the service needs and nothing more. The privacy policy lists everything we hold.
  • You can export and delete your data yourself, at any time, without asking.
  • The code that runs this service is public, so these commitments can be checked.

7. Ending the agreement

You can delete your account at any time from /account/delete. We may suspend or close accounts that breach these terms, that are inactive for more than two years, or if we discontinue the service as described above.

8. Disclaimers

The service, the specifications and the signed data are provided as is, without warranty of any kind, express or implied, including merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose, non-infringement, accuracy or availability. Preference data is user-supplied; we do not verify it, and requesters rely on it at their own risk.

9. Limitation of liability

To the fullest extent permitted by law, Late Summer Labs is not liable for any indirect, incidental, special, consequential or punitive damages, or for any loss of data, profits or goodwill, arising from the service. Our total liability for any claim relating to the service is limited to one hundred US dollars. Some jurisdictions do not allow these limitations, in which case they apply to the extent permitted.

10. General

  • These terms are governed by the laws of the State of Washington, USA, without regard to conflict-of-law rules, and disputes will be brought in the courts there, unless the consumer-protection law where you live gives you the right to a different forum.
  • If any part of these terms is unenforceable, the rest remains in effect.
  • We may update these terms. Material changes will be announced by email to account holders and on the site at least 14 days before they take effect; continued use after that is acceptance.
  • These terms, together with the privacy policy, are the whole agreement for the hosted service.

Contact

Late Summer Labs · hello@openpreference.org · github.com/openpreference