Licence Agreement

Version 1.0 · Effective [DATE]

This Agreement is between you and [LEGAL ENTITY NAME], of [COMPANY ADDRESS] (“we”, “us”), and governs your use of the Akastroid software (“the Software”).

By installing or using the Software you accept this Agreement. If you do not accept it, do not install the Software, and request a refund under our Refund Policy.

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1. What you are buying

The Software is licensed, not sold. You acquire a licence to use it. We keep ownership of the Software itself, and of everything in it.

2. Your licence

2.1 Scope. Subject to payment and to this Agreement, we grant you a non-exclusive, non-transferable, worldwide licence to install and use the Software.

2.2 “Lifetime” means the 1.x version line. A lifetime licence entitles you to every release in the 1.x series, for as long as you keep using it, with no recurring fee and no expiry. A future major version — 2.0 and later — is a separate product and a separate purchase, normally offered to existing licence holders at an upgrade price. We are not obliged to release any particular update.

2.3 Two computers, any platform. A licence covers two computers, active at any one time. It is not tied to an operating system: the same key activates the macOS or Windows build, and you may download whichever you need at no extra cost — a laptop and a desktop, or macOS on one and Windows on the other, is what the two places are for. A third machine needs one of the first two released.

2.4 Transferring it. Open Akastroid on a computer that currently holds the licence and choose Deactivate this computer. That frees its place and you may activate elsewhere immediately, as often as you like. If the machine is lost, sold, broken or wiped before you deactivated it, sign in at akastroid.com/account and choose Release every computer, which frees both places without needing either machine. Failing that, write to hello@akastroid.com — we will not make you buy a second licence because a laptop was stolen.

A licence covers one person, not one household, team or organisation.

2.5 Commercial use is permitted. Images you process with the Software are yours. Sell them, print them, publish them, license them — we claim nothing in your photographs, your data or your output, and we require no credit. This is your work; the Software is a tool you used.

2.6 Organisations. If the Software is used by more than one person, or paid for by an employer for employee use, one licence is required per user. Contact hello@akastroid.com for volume terms.

3. What you may not do

You may not:

• share, resell, rent, sublicense or transfer your licence key;
• distribute the Software, or make it available on a network for others to install;
• reverse engineer, decompile or disassemble the Software, except to the extent that this restriction is prohibited by law in your jurisdiction;
• remove or alter any notice of copyright, licence or attribution, including the third-party credits described in clause 9;
• use the Software to build a competing product.

4. Licence keys and activation

Your key identifies your licence. Treat it as you would a password. We may deactivate a key that has been published or shared.

When you activate, Akastroid identifies this computer by a system identifier which is hashed before it is used, so the value identifies the computer to Akastroid and to nothing else and cannot be turned back into the identifier it came from. That value is written beside your key on your own machine, and it is sent once — with your key and a name for the computer — to our activation server, which records that one of your two places is in use.

We are telling you plainly what that does and does not do.

It happens once. The request is made when you enter your key, and at no other time: not when you open Akastroid, not when you process or export, and on no schedule. There is no check-in and nothing to switch off, because after activation there is nothing left to switch off. Clause 6 is unchanged: nothing about your images, files or use of the Software is sent, then or ever.

It fails in your favour. If our server cannot be reached, Akastroid works normally for fourteen days and confirms itself the next time you are online. We would rather carry the cost of an unconfirmed licence than lock you out of software you have paid for because of a network you do not control.

It is not a lock. It counts places at the moment of activation and nothing more. Your key keeps working if you go offline for a year, and we cannot switch off a copy that is already activated.

If your key is lost, contact hello@akastroid.com and we will reissue it.

5. Updates

Updates within the licensed version line are provided at no additional charge when we release them. We may change, add or remove features between releases. We do not undertake to maintain compatibility with any particular operating system version, camera or file format indefinitely, though we will not remove support for a format we advertised at the time of your purchase without notice.

6. Your data stays yours

The Software processes your files locally and transmits nothing. What it does and does not do with your data is set out in the Privacy Policy, which forms part of this Agreement.

7. Warranty

7.1 We warrant that the Software will perform substantially as described in its documentation for 90 days from purchase. If it does not, tell us and we will either fix it or refund you.

7.2 Beyond clause 7.1, and to the fullest extent the law allows, the Software is provided “as is”, without warranties of any kind, express or implied, including merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose, and non-infringement.

7.3 Akastroid is image-processing software for photographs. It is not calibrated scientific instrumentation, and its output should not be relied on for photometry, astrometry, publication or any measurement where accuracy matters, without independent verification.

7.4 Statutory rights. Nothing in this Agreement excludes or limits rights you have as a consumer that cannot be excluded by law. If you are in the UK, the EU, Australia or another jurisdiction with mandatory consumer guarantees, those guarantees apply in addition to clause 7.1 and are not affected by clause 7.2.

8. Liability

8.1 To the fullest extent permitted by law, our total liability arising out of or relating to this Agreement is limited to the amount you paid for the Software.

8.2 We are not liable for indirect or consequential loss, loss of data, loss of profit, or loss of images — including where the Software deletes, corrupts or fails to produce a file.

8.3 Keep your original frames. The Software writes to its own output files and to a scratch cache, and does not modify your source frames. Even so, no software should be the only copy of anything: back up your captures.

8.4 Nothing in this clause limits our liability for death or personal injury caused by negligence, for fraud, or for anything else that cannot be limited by law.

9. Third-party material

The Software includes astronomical catalogues and photographs owned by others and used under their own licences, including material under Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0. These are listed in src/assets/CREDITS.md, which is distributed with the Software and is reachable from inside it. Your licence to that material comes from its own terms, not from this Agreement, and those terms prevail over this Agreement in respect of that material.

10. Termination

10.1 This licence ends automatically if you materially breach it and do not put the breach right within 30 days of us telling you about it.

10.2 On termination you must stop using the Software and remove it from your devices. Images you have already produced remain yours; clause 2.5 survives termination.

10.3 You may terminate at any time by uninstalling. A refund on termination is governed solely by the Refund Policy.

11. Changes to this Agreement

We may publish revised terms for future versions or future purchasers. The version you accepted at purchase continues to govern the licence you bought. We will not retroactively reduce the rights of an existing licence holder.

12. General

12.1 Governing law. This Agreement is governed by the laws of India, and its courts have non-exclusive jurisdiction. If you are a consumer, you keep the protection of the mandatory laws of your country of residence.

12.2 Severability. If any provision is found unenforceable, the rest continues in force.

12.3 Entire agreement. This Agreement, with the Privacy and Refund Policies, is the whole agreement between us about the Software.

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[LEGAL ENTITY NAME] · [COMPANY ADDRESS] · [COMPANY NUMBER] hello@akastroid.com · akastroid.com