Ornithopter Terms

Ornithopter is a small business with a big goal.

These sections describe our:

General Terms

By using these services you agree to our terms.

You are responsible for moderating the content within your group, and managing your group ACLs.

Users on the free trial month are limited to one instance.

Instances are capped at 10 per account. You may ask us to remove the limit.

You agree that you are authorized to do business on behalf of the company or brand you work with.

You must be at least 18 years old.

For now we are accepting US customers only.

Service License

Ornithopter’s services are granted to you on a limited basis. In particular these services are:

Billing

Ornithopter’s services are billed either monthly or yearly.

We will ask for payment details after your first free month, and will bill you at the end of your second.

Bills are due within 14 days. Failure to pay can result in suspension of service.

Credits to your account will be added as soon as practical and may appear on the following month’s invoice.

Our Content & Your Feedback

You agree to not impersonate Ornithopter.

You agree that feedback and product ideas are given freely and without restriction.

We depend on your communication to know if things are going okay.

Your Content

Your content is your own. You grant us permission to store and copy user data. An example of copying is backups or site migrations.

If you make content public that’s your choice. You give us permission to serve your content. Due to the nature of the software you should assume all content in bivouac could become public.

The legaleze for that is: you grant Ornithopter a perpetual, non-exclusive, worldwide, sublicensable license to copy and publish content.

Do not post the following content:

Limitation of Warranty

Use of these services does not include warranty for:

We can’t restore what you haven’t chosen to backup. If you disable backups we may not be able to recover your data.

Support

Customers of the hosted version of bivouac gain access to email based support for issues including: service problems, bivouac usage tips, planning, billing, privacy, etc.

We are not a managed moderation service, nor are we a content/copyediting service. It’s up to you to make your own community.

Ticket SLA:

Self-hosters may optionally pay money for support, at whatever price they choose. We may not be able to support every configuration of the software.

Ornithopter may choose what features to enable on the hosted sites. Features are based on the subscription tier of the instance. See more in Pricing.

Service Level Agreement

SLA subject to change (just like the rest of the agreement).

Uptime SLA is per each individual server, not your whole bill.

Typical system maintenance or modifications can cause transient or intermittent errors for up to 5 minutes.

If you spot something, please reach out to us ASAP.

Outage credits eligible in chunks of 15 minutes, if the outage lasts longer than 15 minutes.

You must submit a support ticket for the credit to apply.

This does not include planned downtime.

Liability Cap

Refunds for violation of contract are capped at 1 month of usage.

We will not refund you more than you’ve paid that month.

You must bring up your refund concern within 14 days, or we will consider the matter settled.

Acceptable Use

Ornithopter is a small business and can’t handle risky users. Failure to behave can lead to a termination without a refund. Please use your common sense and ask if you aren’t sure.

Expressly Disallowed:

You are responsible for moderating your communities to align with these rules. We will not peer with groups that are problematic.

Our hosted instances should comply with the Mastodon Server Covenant, a code of conduct for most Fediverse servers.

We may choose to override your moderation decisions or remove you for any reason.

Be the kind of person we don’t have to make a rule for.

Good vs Bad Fits

Privacy

Ornithopter values privacy, and does not sell your data. We are a human-made business that does not use generative AI for or on content.

Due to the nature of the software you should assume all content in bivouac could become public.

Data Collected

We don’t like extra data. We only store your data as long as we need it.

Data shared:

Cybersecurity Monitoring

We collect security and performance data centrally (self-hosted Wazuh).

This data is used by us to respond to attacks.

If we are contacted by (or need to contact) law enforcement about an event we will generally try to notify you.

Due to the nature of how the mirroring works, we might not have details on the threat actor who created the content (Tor Onion v3).

Upstream Providers summarized

Ornithopter Hosting works with the following providers to render your service.

Name Purpose Risk Spiciness Read More
Porkbun DNS Low/None Low Porkbun Privacy Policy
Vultr Hosting server-side key access Medium Vultr Privacy Policy
Backblaze Encrypted backups Low/None Low Backblaze Privacy Policy
Crowdstrike Antivirus Machine Learning High Crowdstrike Privacy Policy
Bunkerweb Web Application Firewall Shared threat intel High BunkerWeb Privacy Policy
Stripe Payments Billing data Medium Stripe Privacy Policy

Our Servers

Promotions

Ornithopter offers the following promotions:

First Month

Your first 30 days are free, with the following conditions:

25% - Marginalized Folks

This generally applies to any group that is less privileged, underrepresented, marginalized, disadvantaged, or vulnerable. Originally this considered three base categories (POC, Women, LGBT), but if you’re in a group that’s marginalized (e.g., disability, ethnicity, religion etc), hit the checkmark.

If you say you qualify as a member of a marginalized group, you can receive 25% off your first two years a paid customer.

No yearly commitment necessary (individual product yearly pricing is cheaper than month-to-month).

Must be used within the first two years to apply.

It’s temporary due to revenue concerns, but that could change. Maybe it’s possible to do this as a permanent discount in the future?

Referrals

Paying users may refer a friend and you both receive 10% off. Valid for their first 24 months paying.

If you refer multiple people a max of two will apply on any bill. Spares are used later.

Your participation is for your own benefit, not another third party. You cannot pay someone else to get the referral or accept payment for a referral.

Your friend or business contact must be a separate entity you mutually know. You may not refer yourself.

We reserve the right to deny you the referral discount if you attempt to circumvent the spirit of the referral program.

You may not post referral links publicly (like on coupon websites). You may not spam others about Ornithopter or we may cancel your account without a refund.