Legal

Terms of Service

The rules for using Obsidian's free tools, buying Pro, and staying on the right side of the acceptable-use line.

Effective: October 1, 2026 · Seller: The Obsidian Team · Contact: [support email]

1. What we provide

Obsidian is a legitimate software-protection framework for Windows that developers integrate into software they own: a portable binary packer for finished executables, and a build-time SDK for per-function protection, plus backend services (licensed delivery, rotation, updates) for paying customers.

The free tier is open source via GitHub and fully offline. The Pro tier is closed source, served from our own site behind license-key entitlement, with online features that contact our backend. An enterprise/custom tier may be offered later and is not part of this agreement today.

2. License tiers

Free tier

Granted under the open-source license shown in the GitHub repository. Current intent is a permissive link-friendly license (MPL/LGPL under evaluation - AGPL is not committed because it would deter commercial evaluation); the repository text controls. Free caps SDK protection at the medium level and includes the basic packer, basic runtime, and basic offline rotation. Free requires no account and phones home to nothing.

Pro tier (coming soon)

• Scope. A paid, non-exclusive, non-transferable license to the specific features purchased (a la carte items or the bundle), for use by the licensee to protect their own software.
• Offline features: lifetime / perpetual fallback. What you bought keeps working in the version you have, forever. Renewal buys continued updates, new passes, and fresh rotation seeds - not continued permission to run old builds.
• Online features: metered. License validation (per seat/activation, cached with short TTL), storage (per GB), and server-side rotation (per frequency). A cost estimator is shown before purchase and budget caps are enforced - no surprise bills.
• Gated delivery. The backend authenticates the key server-side and sends only the bytes for paid features. Never-paid features never touch the PC. The installer and toolchain treat the client as hostile and fail safe.
• Watermarking. Pro builds carry a hidden per-license marker for leak tracing. If a marked build leaks, the associated key may be revoked (see §3).

3. Acceptable use and revocation

You may use Obsidian only to protect software you own or are authorized to protect. You may not:

• Wrap, conceal, or distribute malware, spyware, ransomware, stealers, RATs, or any software whose purpose or effect is unauthorized access, harm, or deception.
• Protect third-party software to evade its licensing, integrity checks, or anti-cheat/anti-tamper without authorization.
• Share, resell, or leak Pro tools, keys, or watermarked builds; strip watermarks; or help others bypass entitlement checks.
• Abuse backend services (credential stuffing, seat-spoofing, scraping, DDoS, reverse-proxying paid features to unlicensed users).

We may suspend or revoke keys and backend access for violations, chargebacks, or abuse - including free-tier misuse that associates the tool with malware (this doubles as AV-reputation defense for all users). Revocation disables future downloads, new builds with Pro passes, and online features; existing offline Pro builds already shipped continue to run under the perpetual fallback. We report serious abuse where the law requires it.

4. Pro billing, delivery, and refunds

• Merchant of record. Checkout runs through a merchant of record (e.g. Lemon Squeezy or Gumroad), which handles tax/VAT. Their receipt and terms apply to the payment itself.
• Activation. After purchase you receive a license key. Enter it in the installer/toolchain; the backend verifies entitlement server-side and delivers only paid components, signed.
• Support and updates. Pro includes constant updates (new obfuscation passes, rotation service) while the license is active, plus a public integration API with a compatibility policy so “constantly updated” does not mean “constantly broken.” Support labor is priced into Pro; enterprise SLAs are not included.
• Refunds / chargebacks. Refund requests go through the merchant of record within their window. Any refund or chargeback revokes the associated key and backend entitlements; you must stop using Pro-gated builds and tooling. Built before first sale - no exceptions.
• Age and entity. Paid purchases are contracts with the named legal entity above, via an adult-held merchant account. You must be legally able to enter a purchase contract in your jurisdiction, or have a parent/guardian purchase for you.

5. No unbreakable-protection warranty

Obsidian is provided “as is,” without warranties of any kind, express or implied, including merchantability and fitness for a particular purpose. Specifically:

• All client-side protection is friction, not a wall: it raises attacker cost and shrinks the exposure window. It does not and cannot guarantee software cannot be reverse-engineered, dumped, patched, or cracked. Code must decrypt in memory to run.
• We do not warrant any period of “uncracked time,” any AV-detection count, or compatibility with every binary (relocations, TLS, CFG, and packer edge cases vary - test your targets).
• Online features are best-effort lights-out services with graceful last-known-good fallback, not uptime guarantees, unless a future enterprise SLA says otherwise in writing.

6. Liability limits

To the maximum extent permitted by law, the seller's total liability for any claim arising from Obsidian is limited to the amount you paid for the Pro license in the 12 months before the claim (or $0 if you use only the free tier). We are not liable for indirect, incidental, consequential, or special damages - including lost profits, lost data, cracked or cloned software, AV flags, or takedowns by third parties. Some jurisdictions do not allow these limits, so they apply only to the extent the law allows.

You are responsible for testing protected builds, signing your own output, handling your keys, and complying with the laws that apply to software distribution in your jurisdiction.

7. Changes and termination

• We may update these Terms; material changes to paid terms apply prospectively and are posted here with a new effective date. Continued use after the effective date is acceptance.
• You may stop using Obsidian at any time. We may terminate access for violations of §3, fraud, or non-payment, with the perpetual-fallback effect described above.
• Pro evaluation/trial keys, if offered, are time- or feature-limited and revoke automatically at expiry.
• Questions: [support email]. Governing law and venue: [jurisdiction - to be set with legal counsel].

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