Terms of Use

To protect Open RSS ("us", "we", "our") and uphold our mission to serve you ("you", "your"), we have to be clear (and unfortunately a little wordy) about our work and any derivative of it, including our RSS feeds, the copy in the blog articles we write, the source code exposed on our website, or anything else we may offer to the public ("services") and how these services should be used by you. Your use of our services means you agree to everything on this page and, unfortunately, it all applies to you whether or not you've actually read it.

Using Our Services

How you use our services are important to us and everyone else who relies on them. So we kindly require a few things from you.

• Limit the frequency of requests

  Making too many requests to our server not only hogs bandwidth that can otherwise be used by other users, but it can prevent the deliverability of our services altogether. Therefore, when consuming our services, we ask that you use an appropriate application. This means using a high-quality RSS reader application (maybe one we recommend) that has built-in mechanisms to limit the frequency of requests. Or, using a well-supported browser that caches content appropriately and respects response status codes.

• Refrain from dodgy or suspicious behavior

  Cyberattacks usually succeed due to unchecked sketchy behavior, so we must stay vigilant. We can't always tell if it's you who are accessing our services, a cute little bot, or some evil mastermind waiting to kidnap and trap us in your dungeon. So please use our services as we intended so that we know you're innocuous. That means don't go around requesting URL paths to obviously non-existent pages, sniffing for admin panels, or probing private paths on our server.

• Use our services how they were intended to be used

  To keep our services free, operational, and accessible to everyone, our services are only to be used in the ways for which they were intended. Some examples are consuming RSS feed content through an RSS reader for your own informational purposes. Or, interacting with the content on our website content in a normal web browser. Redistributing our services or content on applications, platforms, or websites or using our services for any purpose other than for which they were intended is not permitted.

• Use our services only in a non-commercial way

  You agree not to use any of our services for commercial purposes. Making money from the very thing we give you for free is dishonest and immoral. If we don't charge you to use our services, neither should you.

Limitation of Liability

Solving the world's problems is a goal of ours, but there's magic in us all being realistic with ourselves.

• Liability From the Use of Our Services

  Unfortunately, using our services doesn't come with any warranty of any kind. So we aren't responsible for anything that happens to you or anyone else as a result of using our services, because who are we? Your parents? You agree that all risks, when using our services, lies with you and that you won't hold us liable, or show up at our door with pitchforks you found in the back of your garage, for any claim or damages arising from, out of, or in relation to any connection to or use of our services.

• Liability From Content Used in Our Services

  Frequently, the content used in our services may be content that we don't own. The ownership and liability of such content rests solely with its original owner or the person from whom the content originated. Therefore, you may not store, modify, claim, exercise rights to, or otherwise manipulate this content in any way without the owner's permission. And you agree not to hold us liable for any legal action that may come as a result of your use or consumption of the content.

• Liability From Your Consent to Third-Party Terms

  The content used in our services is generated by third-parties, who may have their own agreements, including terms, privacy policies, and other legal bindings. You agree that, by using our services, you also agree to all agreements from all third-parties from where the content in our services originated. And, in no event, are we liable for your violation of those agreements.

Violations of These Terms

Break these terms, and we'll have to break away from you.

To protect our mission and ensure we can continue to serve the public, your violation of these terms will result in you being blocked and/or banned from using our services. After that, we may be forced to take legal action if the violation continues.

There's no way we can predict every possible scenario in the future that would be in violation of these terms, so we can't explicitly list all of them. But hopefully you see that the spirit throughout our terms is the same and that—even if not listed here—it may still be a violation. If you have any questions about these terms or the use of our services, we encourage you to reach out and ask us to be sure.

Terms Updates

This page may change as our needs evolve. If that happens (which it probably will), it may mean we'll have to update this page with more words that may put you to sleep. But we'll do our best to let you know through our Changelog, which has an RSS feed you can subscribe to. Once the updates are made here, continuing to use our services means you agree to those as well.