Terms of Service

1. Acceptance of Terms

By accessing our website, downloading or deploying our software components, or executing a commercial statement of work with us, you acknowledge that you have read, understood, and agree to be bound by these Terms and our Privacy Policy. If you are entering into these Terms on behalf of a company or other legal entity, you represent that you have the legal authority to bind such entity.

2. Open-Source Licensing & Upstream Attribution

VectorDuct develops and maintains developer infrastructure, including AI routing middleware, customized API gateway distributions, and multimodal workflow connectors:

• Governing Open-Source Licenses: Our open-source software repositories are licensed under their respective open-source licenses (such as the Apache License 2.0, MIT License, or applicable upstream licenses) located in the root directory of each repository. In the event of any conflict between these Terms and an applicable open-source license regarding your use of source or binary code, the terms of the open-source license shall prevail.
• Upstream Components: Certain distributions maintained by VectorDuct extend or incorporate third-party upstream open-source projects. VectorDuct preserves all original copyright notices and license attributions in strict compliance with upstream governance requirements.

3. Commercial Engineering Services & Master Agreements

In addition to open-source tooling, VectorDuct provides enterprise consulting, private VPC deployment assistance, custom protocol adapter engineering, RBAC/SSO integration, and ongoing Service Level Agreement (SLA) maintenance:

• Order of Precedence: All commercial engagements, custom deliverables, uptime guarantees, and fee structures are governed exclusively by a mutually executed Master Services Agreement ("MSA") or Statement of Work ("SOW").
• Billing and Taxes: Customers procuring commercial services agree to pay all fees specified in the applicable SOW in accordance with the stated payment schedule. All fees are exclusive of applicable sales, value-added, or withholding taxes.

4. Customer Responsibilities & Upstream Compliance (BYOC)

When deploying VectorDuct middleware to route traffic to third-party foundation model providers, cloud platforms, or external APIs, you agree to the following:

• Credential Security & Billing Liability: Under our Bring-Your-Own-Credentials (BYOC) architecture, you are solely responsible for securing your cloud IAM credentials, API keys, and rate-limit thresholds. VectorDuct is not a reseller of upstream model compute and bears no financial liability for compute charges, token consumption, or overage fees billed by your upstream cloud or model providers.
• Acceptable Use: You shall not use our software or Services to violate applicable laws, infringe third-party intellectual property rights, transmit malicious code, or bypass safety filters. You are solely responsible for ensuring that your downstream applications comply with the Acceptable Use Policies (AUP) and Terms of Service of the respective upstream model providers you connect to.

5. Intellectual Property Rights

Except for open-source components licensed under permissive terms and Customer-owned runtime data, VectorDuct retains all right, title, and interest in and to the vectorduct.com website, technical documentation, architectural diagrams, and the "VectorDuct" trade name, logos, and brand marks. You may not use our trademarks in any manner that implies endorsement or affiliation without our prior written consent.

6. Disclaimer of Warranties

EXCEPT AS EXPRESSLY PROVIDED IN A MUTUALLY EXECUTED COMMERCIAL MSA OR SOW, THE WEBSITE, OPEN-SOURCE SOFTWARE, AND SERVICES ARE PROVIDED STRICTLY "AS IS" AND "AS AVAILABLE" WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND. TO THE MAXIMUM EXTENT PERMITTED BY APPLICABLE LAW, VECTORDUCT DISCLAIMS ALL WARRANTIES, EXPRESS, IMPLIED, OR STATUTORY, INCLUDING BUT NOT LIMITED TO IMPLIED WARRANTIES OF MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE, TITLE, AND NON-INFRINGEMENT. WE DO NOT WARRANT THAT THE SOFTWARE WILL BE UNINTERRUPTED, ERROR-FREE, OR IMMUNE FROM UPSTREAM API BREAKING CHANGES.

7. Limitation of Liability

TO THE MAXIMUM EXTENT PERMITTED BY LAW, IN NO EVENT SHALL VECTORDUCT, ITS FOUNDERS, MAINTAINERS, OR AFFILIATES BE LIABLE FOR ANY INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL, CONSEQUENTIAL, OR PUNITIVE DAMAGES (INCLUDING LOSS OF PROFITS, DATA, BUSINESS INTERRUPTION, OR UPSTREAM CLOUD BILLING OVERAGES) ARISING OUT OF OR RELATED TO THESE TERMS OR YOUR USE OF THE SOFTWARE. OUR AGGREGATE LIABILITY SHALL NOT EXCEED ZERO DOLLARS ($0.00) FOR FREE OPEN-SOURCE SOFTWARE USE, OR THE TOTAL AMOUNT ACTUALLY PAID BY CUSTOMER TO VECTORDUCT UNDER THE APPLICABLE SOW IN THE TWELVE (12) MONTHS PRECEDING THE CLAIM FOR COMMERCIAL SERVICES.

8. Modifications and Termination

We reserve the right to modify these Terms from time to time by posting the revised version on our website and updating the "Effective Date" above. We may suspend or terminate commercial services upon written notice if you materially breach these Terms and fail to cure such breach within a reasonable period.

9. Contact Information

For legal notices, open-source licensing inquiries, or commercial agreement requests, please contact us at:

• Email: contact@vectorduct.com / founders@vectorduct.com
• Website: https://vectorduct.com