Terms of Use. Service Agreements. End-User License Agreements. We don’t usually think about them, but nearly every piece of software we use requires us to agree to one of these pages-long contracts before we can get to work.

What’s in these agreements varies a lot. Maybe you’re giving up the rights to everything you enter into the system. Maybe you’re agreeing to have the provider choose a private arbitrator to handle disputes, rather than the court system. Maybe you’re letting the provider use your logo in their advertising without even asking.

Every contract is different, except for two things: They’re confusing, and they’re written to give the software provider as many rights as they can get away with. It’s not like you can negotiate, anyhow.

We think that stinks.

We’re changing Gimlet’s Terms of Use. We are doing this to be clearer, as well as to give more rights back to you, our clients. Our new terms are online here, and the main changes are:

• Previously, we said that if anything in our Terms were against the law where you are, you couldn’t use Gimlet at all. Now, those terms (and only those terms!) don’t apply to you.
• You’re no longer agreeing to follow Wisconsin law.
• We’ve removed our non-competition clause. If you want to start a Gimlet competitor, good luck to you!
• You don’t need to indemnify us in the event of lawsuits.

Why are we doing this?

Why, you ask, would we give up rights in our terms when obviously, people have been agreeing to them before? Two reasons:

1. We do have some clients (government clients in particular) who simply couldn’t accept some of the previous terms, and changing the terms for everyone is easier than negotiating new terms for a few clients.
2. It’s the right thing to do.

Do all of our clients need to follow Wisconsin’s laws? Could we even enforce this for clients outside the United States? Can we really ask you to indemnify us from any lawsuit that might arise from Gimlet’s use? Is it morally reasonable to forbid our clients from doing something that we might think is competing with us?

We don’t think so. So we’re just… not doing those things any more.

What’s not changing?

Most of the rest of our terms are staying the same. Some of the language is different now (we’ve worked tirelessly with our lawyers to make the language as human-readable as possible), but the meaning is mainly the same.

Our Privacy Policy remains the same as it was before.

And of course, Gimlet — the product, team, and our customer service — aren’t changing a bit as a result of this.

What if you do want to negotiate?

And finally: Something we haven’t really advertised: For clients subscribing to Gimlet Max, we’re more than happy to engage our lawyers and negotiate our terms of use with you. Send a note to support@gimlet.us to get started.