The deal, in plain words.

Hackyard runs small, capped hackathons called Yards. It's free. There's no paid tier, no entry fee, and nothing you have to buy to compete. How a Yard works — spots, voting, badges, what's enforced and what isn't — is spelled out in the rules & FAQ, which is part of these terms.

You need an account to claim a spot, submit, or vote. Keep your login details to yourself — you're responsible for what happens under your account. One account per person. Extra accounts made to vote more than once will be removed along with their votes.

You own everything you build. Hackyard claims no ownership of your project, your code, or your idea. We don't take equity, revenue, or a licence to commercialise your work.

Submitting does give us permission to show your build on the site and to feature it — screenshot, writeup, repo link, demo — including on our social accounts and in a champion writeup. You can ask us to stop featuring you at any time.

Yards require a public repo, so what you submit will be open to everyone under whatever licence you choose. Don't submit anything you're not free to make public.

Don't do these:

• Submit work that isn't yours, or that you can't open-source
• Make extra accounts to vote for yourself or to pad a count
• Post anything hateful, harassing, sexual, or illegal
• Harass other builders, on the site or about the site
• Attack the site, scrape it, or try to reach data that isn't yours

Some rules we enforce in the database and some we trust you on. The FAQ says exactly which is which, so nobody has to guess.

We can remove a submission, or an account, for the things listed above. If it's a judgement call rather than something obvious, we'll say publicly what was removed and why.

This power exists for conduct only. It is never used because of who is winning, and it is the single exception to the rule that Hackyard doesn't interfere in outcomes. There is no judging panel and no organizer override of a vote — the top vote-getter wins, whoever they are. If we ever removed a build to change who won, the whole thing would be worthless.

Hackyard is provided as-is. It's a free service run by one person — things may break, a Yard may be delayed, and we can't promise the site is always available or bug-free. Back up anything you care about; your code should live in your own repo, not only here.

To the extent the law allows, we're not liable for losses arising from using the site. Nothing here removes rights you have that can't be waived.

If these terms change in a way that affects you, we'll say so rather than editing quietly. Questions: @HackyardSocial or the contact page.