Legal

Terms of Use

Last updated 25 August 2026

These terms apply to everyone who uses Floc. By creating an account or contributing to a project you agree to them. If you use Floc on behalf of an organisation, you confirm that you may accept these terms for that organisation.

1. What Floc is

Floc is a network where sustainable ideas find the people, expertise and resources to become real. We host projects, profiles, tasks, opportunities and conversations. We are not a party to any agreement, collaboration, employment relationship or funding arrangement that members enter into with each other.

2. Your account

You need an account to contribute. Keep your login details secure and give accurate information about yourself or your organisation. You must be old enough to enter a binding agreement in your country. You are responsible for everything posted from your account.

3. Ownership of ideas and content

You keep ownership of everything you post. Contributors keep ownership of their contributions. By posting on Floc you grant us a non-exclusive, worldwide, royalty-free licence to host, store, display and distribute that content for the purpose of operating and promoting the platform — for Confidential projects, only within the access controls described below. You confirm that you have the right to post what you post.

4. The three development choices

Every project is developed under one of three choices, chosen by its Idea Lead: Public development — Open source, Public development — All rights reserved, or Private development — Confidential. The choice determines who can see the project, what others may do with its material and whether it is publicly disclosed. The Sharing & IP page explains each environment in plain language and forms part of the context of these terms.

4.1 Public development — Open source

Projects under Public development — Open source are publicly visible and developed as open source. The applicable copyright-protected project material is licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International licence. Anyone may use, adapt and build on that material, including commercially, provided the Idea Lead and contributors are credited and adaptations are shared under the same or a compatible licence. Contributions to a Public development — Open source project are made under the same licence. Other members may develop their own version inspired by the project; the new work links back to its source and attribution and version history are preserved. The licence covers copyright in the shared material within its scope. It does not license abstract ideas, patent rights, trade marks or every other conceivable intellectual property right, and it does not grant rights the Idea Lead does not hold.

4.2 Public development — All rights reserved

Projects under Public development — All rights reserved are publicly visible and discoverable, but publishing grants no open licence. Unlike Public development — Open source, they are not available for independent reuse: their material may not be copied, reproduced, adapted or commercialised without the Idea Lead's written permission. Others may discover the project, follow it, discuss it, contact the Idea Lead and collaborate where the Idea Lead permits. Publishing a project on Floc is a public disclosure. It is not a patent filing, and if the project contains a potentially patentable invention, publishing it can seriously affect or destroy the possibility of obtaining patent protection. Public development — All rights reserved is not a protected IP status.

4.3 Private development — Confidential

Projects under Private development — Confidential are access-controlled. They have no public project page or preview, are not indexed by search engines and do not appear in feeds, search, recommendations or public profiles. Only the Idea Lead and participants who have been invited and have accepted the applicable confidentiality terms may access the project. No open licence applies to Confidential material. Floc provides technical and contractual measures intended to support confidential development and controlled disclosure. We do not guarantee patentability, we do not file patent applications, we do not guarantee that information legally qualifies as a trade secret, we cannot guarantee that confidentiality is never breached, and nothing here replaces professional legal or IP advice.

4.4 Confidentiality agreements

Access to a Confidential project is granted through Invite under NDA. The invited participant is shown the applicable confidentiality terms and must accept them explicitly before receiving access. That agreement is between the project's Idea Lead and the participant; Floc facilitates and records it and is not a contractual party to it. The Idea Lead may revoke future access at any time. Revoking access does not terminate confidentiality obligations that have already been accepted. The confidentiality terms offered through the platform are provided as a starting point and should be reviewed by a legal professional before you rely on them.

4.5 Disclosure Logs

For every Confidential project we maintain a Disclosure Log recording invitations, acceptances of confidentiality terms and the accepted version, access grants and revocations, and changes to the project's sharing status, with timestamps. The Idea Lead can view and export this log at any time. Log entries are append-only and cannot be edited or deleted by users, and remain available after a participant's access has ended. The log is documentation of activity on Floc. It does not by itself prove patentability, ownership, confidentiality or any other legal right.

4.6 Public postings from Confidential projects

A Confidential project may publish tasks, opportunities or calls for expertise without exposing the project. Such a posting discloses only the information the Idea Lead deliberately writes into it, and never the project's title, description, images, files, technical information, discussions, team or page. Responding to a posting does not grant access to the project; access remains a separate Invite under NDA.

5. Changing the development choice

Idea Leads may move a project between the three development choices, and every change is timestamped in the project's history. Moving from Private development — Confidential to either public choice is a public disclosure and cannot be undone. Moving to Public development — Open source applies the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence to applicable project material from that point and enables others to build on it; rights already granted under an open licence cannot be withdrawn. Moving a project under either public choice to Private development — Confidential restricts future access only — it does not undo, reverse or invalidate disclosure that has already occurred, nor licences already granted.

6. Contributions and ownership

Confidentiality and ownership are separate questions. A confidentiality agreement governs what a participant may disclose; it does not determine who owns intellectual property created by collaborators. Taking part in a Confidential project does not transfer ownership of a participant's contribution. Unless agreed otherwise in writing, contributors retain their applicable rights to their own contributions, and Project Leads and contributors should agree separately how contributions may be used. Contributions to Open projects are made under CC BY-SA 4.0 as described above.

7. Collaboration and history

Projects have a change log and version history so that contributions stay attributed. Edits are recorded and cannot be quietly erased. The Idea Lead remains Project Lead and decides what is shared, who joins the team and how the project moves forward.

7.1 Deleting or withdrawing a project

While no one else has contributed, an Idea Lead may delete a project. Deletion is a soft delete: the project, its needs and open interests are hidden immediately and kept, unpublished, for around 30 days, during which the Idea Lead may restore it; after that period it is permanently removed. Once other people have done meaningful work on the project — solved a task, had a contribution accepted, joined the team, added a record or written a validation — the project can no longer be deleted, only withdrawn. A withdrawn project leaves discovery and can no longer be found or joined, while its history, records and everyone's attribution are retained, and contributors keep the project in their own contribution record in a form that respects the project's current confidentiality. Withdrawal does not end confidentiality obligations already accepted, nor licences already granted.

If a project becomes Confidential, references derived from it elsewhere on Floc — including forks that carried its former title — are anonymised, and its representation in discovery, feeds and contribution records is reduced to public-safe information only: stage, broad topics and the needs the Idea Lead chose to state. Confidentiality is applied as it stands today, not as it stood when the material was created.

7.2 Identity verification

Floc may require identity verification where it is necessary for access or participation. Identity verification is required before a person can be granted access to a Confidential Idea, and it may also be required for particular roles or collaboration settings chosen for a public Idea. Verification is separate from accepting confidentiality terms and is necessary but not sufficient: for a Confidential Idea the person must also accept the applicable confidentiality agreement and be granted access by the Idea Lead or another authorised person.

8. Community guidelines

Do not use Floc to:

post work, designs or media you do not have the right to share
disclose or reuse material from a Confidential project you have been given access to
copy or commercialise material from a Public project without the Idea Lead's permission
harass, threaten, impersonate or discriminate against other members
post spam, advertising or misleading claims about a project or an organisation
scrape the platform, or misuse messaging to contact people in bulk
post anything unlawful or anything that puts people or the environment at risk

Anyone can report a project, profile, message or comment. Moderators may hide a project, remove a comment or message, or suspend an account that breaks these rules.

9. Ending your use

You may stop using Floc at any time and ask us to delete your account. Because collaborative projects depend on attribution, contributions already made to a project remain part of its history, credited to you unless you ask for that credit to be anonymised. Disclosure Log entries and confidentiality obligations you have accepted are retained as part of a project's record.

10. Floc's role and limitations

Floc is provided as-is. We do not verify the accuracy, safety or feasibility of the ideas, technical material or claims published by members, and we do not vet the people or organisations you may work with. We do not provide legal, patent or IP advice, and information on the platform is not a substitute for professional advice. We make no promise that using any environment preserves patentability, creates a trade secret, or prevents another person from breaching an agreement. To the extent permitted by law we are not liable for indirect or consequential loss arising from your use of the platform.

11. Changes and contact

We may update these terms as the platform develops, and will note the date of the last change above. Questions about these terms, a takedown request or an intellectual property complaint can be sent to hello@sparkhive.io.