Terms of Service
Use joshternet.org and other Joshternet-operated services under these rules. Independent participating sites keep their own.
Scope
These terms cover the public hub, the supporting services that run official buttons, declaration checks, nominations, and JoshBot’s public identity, and JoshBot as operated for the Joshternet.
They do not cover independently operated participating websites. Listing a site is not endorsement, partnership, or control. The Joshternet specifications keep their own licenses; implementing them does not put a site under these terms.
Use of the hub
The hub is a public directory and documentation site. You may read it, link to it, and use the public services documented on the hub, subject to rate limits and abuse controls.
Do not use Joshternet-operated services to attack, probe, or overload other people’s systems beyond the documented checker and crawler behavior. Do not submit nominations for websites you are not authorized to represent. Do not try to skip the anti-spam check, origin allowlists, or rate limits.
Public information on the hub (Network listings, topics, activity snippets, OPML) is derived from public pages and feeds. Treat it as a snapshot, not a guarantee of completeness or freshness.
Participation and JoshBot
Participation is declared per website at /.well-known/josh. Joshness is declared, never inferred. Nominating a site asks JoshBot to consider that website as a discovery seed; it does not enroll the site as a participant by itself.
JoshBot crawls according to the identity and robots rules on JoshBot. Crawling and participation are separate. A robots rule that blocks JoshBot is not a statement about Josh identity.
Official buttons
The official button asks the hub whether a website (not a page) is listed in the public registry. Site owners may use the official embed or the WordPress plugin’s Joshternet button. If that check is down, the button should not claim a verified listing. It is not a license, and you do not need it in order to publish /.well-known/josh. Details for site owners are on Buttons.
Availability
Services are provided as-is, without uptime promises. Buttons, checks, and nominations may fail, return an empty state, or be turned off. We may change, slow down, or withdraw operated services.
Infrastructure
Joshternet may choose, change, or discontinue infrastructure providers used to operate Joshternet services. The Joshternet Infrastructure Principles guide those choices. Those principles apply to Joshternet-operated infrastructure and Joshternet’s own provider relationships. They do not dictate which hosting, CDN, analytics, DNS, email, or other infrastructure independently operated participating websites may use.
Licenses and third-party material
Project-owned website code is BSD-3-Clause. Joshternet-authored prose and documentation are CC BY 4.0. Joshternet name and brand marks are not open-licensed; no trademark license is granted. Details are on Licensing.
Third-party software and brand marks used on this hub are listed on Third-party licenses. Participant websites, screenshots, and their content remain theirs.
Public registry files live in joshternet/index-data. Reuse terms for that data belong in that repository.
Privacy and security
Privacy for operated services is described on Privacy. Vulnerability reporting is on Security.
Contact
Effective 5 October 2026. Last updated 5 October 2026.