Terms and conditions

Note: these terms of use do not apply to my User JavaScripts. They have their own terms of use.

All of my scripts that I make available on this site are free to use. However, there are a few conditions.

If you are unsure which of these applies to you, or you need me to clarify any of these points, do not hesitate to contact me.

All sites (including excluded sites)

Please leave all comments in the source - you are using the script(s) for free, so others should be allowed to copy them from your site for free, and they need my instructions! If you change anything in the script source, please leave your own comments in there saying what you changed.
These scripts are provided 'as-is'. While I may offer support if you are having problems, or general queries about implementing one of my scripts, I cannot be held responsible for any problems encountered or losses incurred through use of any of these scripts. While I may also update these scripts on an ad hoc basis, I make no promise or guarentee that the scripts will be updated. However, if you suggest any improvements to a script, I may choose to implement these suggestions.
You are welcome to download, store, print and utilise these scripts, without the need for any written permission. You should not attempt to prevent others from copying the scripts from your site. However, if you want to include the scripts in any script archives for downloading (such as ScriptSearch or JavaScript Kit), online or downloadable web templates (such as the SharePoint templates), or in bundled or distributed scripts/software (such as Opera or Dashboard widgets, or the Formativ Academic Timetable), you must contact me first and obtain my express written permission. See the note on bundling below.
You should check my scripts archive and 'What's new?' pages periodically to see if the script has been updated. More commonly updated scripts will also include version numbers in the .js header file(s). Updates are usually to provide extra functionality, or to increase browser compatibility, as well as the occasional bug fix. If you would like to be automatically kept up to date with script updates, subscribe to my RSS feed. All important script updates will be mentioned on there.
You must not use these scripts for illegal purposes, or on pages containing any illegal material.

Commercial/profit-making public websites

You should put a note saying that the script was provided for free by http://www.howtocreate.co.uk - so if customers are charged money to use the site, they are only charged for the content you provide, not for the scripts that I provide. This note only needs to be included on one page per site (for example, a site policy page or other appropriate page). It does not need to be included on every page the script is used on.
You put a plain text (ie. not script) link to my site on your policy page or other appropriate page, to help me with my search engine rankings. This link only needs to be included on one page per site (for example, a site policy page or other appropriate page). It does not need to be included on every page the script is used on. It must be on a page that customers or users of the site can locate through ordinary site navigation.
The following would suffice for both above points:
```
[Put name(s) of scripts here] script(s) provided for free by
<a href="http://www.howtocreate.co.uk">http://www.howtocreate.co.uk</a>.
Customers are not charged for use of th(is|ese) script(s).
```
Example 1
Collapsible list script provided for free by http://www.howtocreate.co.uk. Customers are not charged for use of this script.

Example 2
Mini window and display based menu scripts provided for free by http://www.howtocreate.co.uk. Customers are not charged for use of these scripts.

Corporate internal websites

You should put a note on a site policy page or other appropriate page saying that the script was provided for free by http://www.howtocreate.co.uk. This note only needs to be included on one page per site (for example, a site policy page or other appropriate page). It does not need to be included on every page the script is used on.
You put a plain text (ie. not script) link to my site. This link only needs to be included on one page per site (for example, a site policy page or other appropriate page). It does not need to be included on every page the script is used on. It must be on a page that users of the site can locate through ordinary site navigation.
The following would suffice for both above points:
```
[Put name(s) of scripts here] script(s) provided for free by
<a href="http://www.howtocreate.co.uk/">http://www.howtocreate.co.uk</a>.
```
Example 1
Collapsible list script provided for free by http://www.howtocreate.co.uk.

Example 2
Mini window and display based menu scripts provided for free by http://www.howtocreate.co.uk.

Definitions

Note: These definitions are for these terms and conditions only, and may not relate to dictionary definitions.

If you are unsure which of these applies to you, or you need me to clarify any of these points, do not hesitate to contact me.

Commercial/profit-making public websites

These are websites that can be accessed via the public internet, do not fall into any of the excluded sites categories and fall into at least one of the following categories:

Sites which are built, owned or maintained by a profit-making person or organisation
Any site which generates revenue, whether through sales, promotion, licensing, premium or paid-for content, marketing, advertising, sponsorship, other affiliate programs, or any other means
Government, government-agency or political-party websites

Corporate internal websites

These are websites that cannot be accessed via the public internet, do not fall into any of the excluded sites categories and fall into any of the following categories:

Sites which are built, owned or maintained by a profit-making person or organisation
Any site which generates revenue, whether through sales, promotion, licensing, premium or paid-for content, marketing, advertising, sponsorship, other affiliate programs, or any other means
Government, government-agency or political-party websites

Excluded sites

Sites are excluded from both the 'commercial/profit-making public websites' and 'corporate internal websites' categories if they fall into any of the following categories:

Personal or hobby sites which generate no revenue
Websites owned and maintained by a charity or not-for-profit organisation. This includes websites of registered charities where the principal activity is fundraising
School, college, university or other educational websites

Note on bundling

This section is informative only.

If you are planning to ask for permission to include my scripts in a bundled software package, you need to email me with the details of your project including:

What script you want to use
What your project is designed to do
What are the terms of your licensing agreement - open source licenses (GPL or equivalent are not compatible) preferred, but all licenses that allow my code to retain its own license will be considered
What is your target audience
What is the URL of your project page, so I can take a look at what you have done so far

If I allow you to use the script, I will probably impose some conditions, such as:

Holding you responsible for ensuring that your version of my script is kept up-to-date (you can use my RSS feed to be notified when the script changes)
Ensuring that my site is quoted as the original source of the script so that your customers will know where they can download originals if they want them
Ensuring that customers are aware that my script components are provided free of charge

Although it is unlikely, I reserve the right to refuse to allow you to use the script.

Compatibility with common open source licenses

It is up to you to ensure that your license allows my scripts to retain their current license.

The GPL license in particular is by design a restrictive viral license, incompatible with virtually all other licenses. It prevents you from bundling anything that is not available for re-licensing GPL license terms. My scripts are not available under GPL or any other GPL-type license (such as RPL/Share-alike), so if you use one of these licenses (for all or part of your distribution), your own license prevents you from using my scripts. Even closed source licenses are more flexible than GPL-type licenses for you as a distributor, from this respect.

There are some licenses that allow you to create software that links to both it and custom licenses, to produce an output that does not have to be released under either license. Examples include LGPL, MPL, SPL, CDDL, OSL, Ms-PL and Ms-RL. As long as your software's license does not force linked components to be re-distributable under its own terms, it is compatible. However, once software under those licenses has been modified or incorporated (not just linked) into your own code, the derivative work must inherit that software's license, and that cannot contain any of my scripts.

It is not possible to use one of these licenses for the overall distribution, as that would require all contents of the distribution to be licensed under those terms - only when linking to files from other distributions are they allowed to mix licenses. However, it would be possible to mix them in an overall distribution using a more permissive license, that allows the components within it to retain their own license. LGPL is unusual here in forcing you to allow any derivative work to become re-distributable as GPL. As such, using LGPL is definitely not possible for an overall distribution that contains one of my scripts.

Although it would be possible for you to provide LGPL/MPL/SPL/CDDL/OSL/Ms-PL/Ms-RL software without my code, and simply provide instructions to your users on how to download a script from my site, and link it into your project (this kind of linking is permitted by LGPL/MPL/SPL/CDDL/OSL/Ms-PL/Ms-RL), neither you nor they would then be allowed to distribute the result under the LGPL/MPL/SPL/CDDL/OSL/Ms-PL/Ms-RL license. That fact would need to be made clear to your users.

If you want to offer your users the benefits of open source, you are better off using a proper permissive license (a truly free license) like the BSD/MIT/ISC/Apache/PHP/zlib licenses, which allows you to use custom licensed software within your own distribution, subject to the terms of that custom license, as long as it is made clear that the BSD/MIT/ISC/Apache/PHP/zlib license applies only to your code, and my scripts retain their own license. Note, however, that you would then not be able to combine it with any GPL/RPL/Share-alike software, while still retaining the permissive license, since the use of GPL/RPL/Share-alike software within your own distribution would force your own distribution to become GPL/RPL/Share-alike licensed. You should still be able to use LGPL/MPL/SPL/CDDL/OSL/Ms-PL/Ms-RL licensed software linked to your overall release, however, subject to the terms of those licenses.

Note: This information is given as my understanding of the terms of the various licenses, but you should check the licenses yourself to ensure they would allow you to use my scripts within your distribution, while still retaining their own custom license. I am not interested in any further discussions of the benefits of various open source or closed source licenses, or in any attempts to clarify the points made in the notes about the various license families. Do not contact me only for the purpose of such discussions.

Note on this license

These conditions and definitions have been adapted from brothercake's licensing pages. There are no plans to switch to a more common license.

License terms for use of my scripts

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