Legal Agreements » Contributor Agreement

The Black Belt Coder website publishes articles and source code contributed by the develper community. This Contributor Agreement governs the terms and conditions between authors who contribute articles and/or source code, and SoftCircuits, P. O. Box 1355, West Jordan, UT 84084, USA.

SoftCircuits may occasionally make changes to this document. Please check back from time to time to read the latest version.

1. Ownership

By contributing content to the Black Belt Coder website, you represent, warrant, and confirm that:

1. No Infringement: To the best of your knowledge and belief, after reasonable inquiry, your Work does not knowingly infringe the rights of any third party, including but not limited to, rights in copyrights, patents, trade marks, service marks, trade secrets, privacy, personality, or other proprietary rights.
2. You have necessary Rights to your Work: You are the author of the Work and have not assigned your rights or had such rights vest in any third party by contract, operation of law or otherwise or if not the author, you have secured all necessary rights and licenses from the owner(s); and you have the right to grant the rights and licenses contained herein.
3. No malicious code: You have not included, and to the best of your knowledge and belief, after reasonable inquiry, your Work does not contain, any virii, Trojan horse, worm, spyware, adware, or other harmful or malicious code.
4. We have the right to identify you: SoftCircuits can and shall publish your name and/or site ID in connection with your Work, and if you require end users to contact you for any reason in connection with licensing of your Work, SoftCircuits can and shall publish your contact information.
5. We don't want to breach other publisher's rights: If the Work is a previously published work, Contributor must give SoftCircuits notice of the prior publication and provide the consent of all copyright holders to the Work being posted on Black Belt Coder and made available to users of the Site.

The Work is otherwise provided "as is", "where is", "as available", without warranty or guarantee of any kind. This means no express, implied or statutory warranty, including without limitation, warranties or conditions of merchantability or fitness for a particular purpose.

Nothing in this Contributor's Agreement restricts or limits your pre-existing rights to use, publish, perform, or distribute your Work.

2. Submissions are Received Without Payment to You

Your submissions and the rights and licenses you grant are provided without cost to SoftCircuits and to participants in the Black Belt Coder website. You accept that you receive benefit sufficient to constitute any necessary good and valuable consideration for the rights and licenses granted herein.

3. Rights of SoftCircuits

You grant SoftCircuits, its affiliated companies and necessary sub-licensees a worldwide, perpetual, royalty-free, irrevocable, non-exclusive, fully assignable and transferable right and license, to edit, adapt, translate, reformat your Work, to post your Work (eg. publish, display, perform, digitally perform) anywhere on our Site, to do what SoftCircuits feels it needs to do to manage and update the Site, to make and maintain back-up and archival copies, and to make your Work available to End Users in accordance with this Agreement and the specific EULA that you specify.

SoftCircuits has no obligation to police compliance with any participant's use or misuse of any Work and the Contributor releases SoftCircuits from all liability arising from any use or misuse of the Work by a participant in the Black Belt Coder Site.

4. User Licenses

You authorize SoftCircuits to offer the EULA selected by you (or deemed selected by you) to End Users as the statement of the rights and license granted to End Users, and agrees to the terms and conditions of that EULA. SoftCircuits is not responsible for assuring compliance with your licensing requirements, and you release SoftCircuits from and against all liability, however occasioned resulting from SoftCircuits' acts or omissions in respect of providing your EULA to End Users. If you desire to assure your rights are protected, you are directed to embed or include your own license forms and acceptance procedures with your contributions.

Over time, legal agreements sometimes need updating to reflect new concepts, media, laws, and legal theories, and to correct or rectify deficiencies subsequently determined. SoftCircuits is authorized and appointed as your agent and attorney to make changes to the applicable end user license agreement for your Work in your name and on your behalf so long as such changes result in an agreement that is no less protective of your rights than the rights and restrictions granted at the time of posting your Work. If you do not agree to amendments to the EULA presented by SoftCircuits, you may (a) require your posting to be removed from future distribution databanks, (b) provide SoftCircuits with licensing terms and conditions acceptable to you and amend your posting to include such terms and conditions, upon notice to SoftCircuits in such form and content as SoftCircuits may reasonably require, and (c) failing any such action, you shall be deemed to have accepted such changes. Acts by you or SoftCircuits will affect future licensing only and will not affect any existing licenses granted by you or SoftCircuits.

5. Material Inducement

You expressly acknowledge that SoftCircuits has entered into this agreement, and has and will make its Site and Services available to you in reliance upon the limitations and exclusions of liability and the disclaimers set forth in this Agreement and in the TOS, and that the same form an essential basis of the bargain between you and SoftCircuits. You expressly agree that all such limitations and exclusions of liability and the disclaimers will survive, and continue to apply in the case of, a fundamental breach or breaches, the failure of essential purpose of contract, the failure of any exclusive remedy or termination of this agreement.

Note: As a consequence of the frequent virus infections across the internet, The Black Belt Coder website will no longer accept binary submissions that do not contain full source code, unless the submission is from a recognized company or institution. Shareware or time-limited submissions will not be accepted.

By making any submission of Work to the Black Belt Coder website, you understand that you have read and agreed to the above usage terms. These terms will be strictly enforced.

If you have any concerns or questions, please contact us.