Terms of Service

1. Definitions

Throughout these Terms, the following capitalized and quoted terms have the meanings specified below:

• "We," "us," "our" means Open Stack Forge, a professional technology consulting enterprise based in Lower Sackville, Nova Scotia, Canada.
• "You," "client," "customer" means the individual, commercial business, or legal entity accessing our website or retaining our services.
• "Services" means the open-source migration planning, sovereign cloud provisioning, credential migration, data transfer, system hardening, and ongoing managed maintenance services delivered by Open Stack Forge.
• "Engagement Agreement" means any signed contract, proposal, Statement of Work (SOW), or written quote that sets forth the specific scope, deliverables, timeline, milestones, and fees for a particular project.

2. Use of Our Website

You may use our website for lawful, professional business purposes only. You expressly agree not to:

• Misuse our digital properties, reverse engineer our web code, or attempt to gain unauthorized access to our hosting infrastructure, database systems, or server networks.
• Reproduce, copy, duplicate, sell, resell, or exploit any portion of our website content, methodologies, branding, or materials without prior express written permission.
• Transmit, upload, or inject viruses, worms, Trojan horses, malware, automated scraping bots, or any other malicious or harmful code.

All website content — including text, brand graphics, SVG illustrations, logos, calculators, comparison matrices, and visual design systems — is owned exclusively by Open Stack Forge and protected under Canadian and international intellectual property, trademark, and copyright laws. You may not utilize our marks, logos, or domain names without our explicit written consent.

3. Engaging Our Services

Scope & Order of Precedence

Each migration or infrastructure implementation is governed by a formal Engagement Agreement defining the exact scope, technical milestones, deliverables, timetable, and pricing. These Terms apply to every engagement unless the Engagement Agreement expressly overrides a specific clause. In the event of any direct conflict between these Terms and a signed Engagement Agreement, the provisions of the signed Engagement Agreement shall govern.

Fixed-Scope Packages

Our fixed-scope migration packages (for example, starting at $2,500 CAD) cover strictly the deliverables and seat thresholds enumerated in your Engagement Agreement. Any work, integrations, legacy conversions, or seat expansions outside the defined scope require a written change order and may incur supplementary professional fees, which we will quote in writing for your approval prior to proceeding.

Your Responsibilities

To enable timely, error-free project execution, you agree to:

• Provide accurate, complete, and timely information regarding your existing software licenses, technical dependencies, seat counts, and security requirements.
• Grant timely, authenticated administrative access to relevant cloud consoles, domains, DNS records, mail relays, and server accounts as needed for migration.
• Designate a primary technical decision-maker authorized to approve migration milestones, rollback triggers, and cutover windows within mutually agreed timeframes.
• Maintain active subscriptions, licenses, and underlying infrastructure tenancies (e.g. AWS, GCP, Hetzner, Fastmail) unless specifically contracted to be provisioned by us.
• Warrant that you possess all requisite corporate rights, authority, and permissions to authorize the migration of the target systems and associated records.

Unanticipated delays or incomplete disclosures from the client side may necessitate adjustments to cutover schedules and project costs.

Excluded Work

Unless explicitly itemized in your signed Engagement Agreement, the following areas fall outside the scope of our Services: ongoing third-party SaaS subscription fees (e.g. Fastmail seat licenses), physical hardware provisioning, custom software development, and formal legal, regulatory, or certified tax compliance advice.

4. Fees and Payment

• Currency & Taxes: All professional fees and retainer rates are quoted in Canadian dollars (CAD) and are exclusive of applicable federal and provincial taxes, including Nova Scotia Harmonized Sales Tax (HST, currently 15% — subject to verification via the Canada Revenue Agency at canada.ca).
• Milestone Schedules: For fixed-scope projects, payments are invoiced in accordance with the milestone schedule defined in the Engagement Agreement (typically a 50% deposit upon signing and the remaining 50% upon verified migration completion and cutover verification).
• Payment Terms: Invoices are payable within the net terms specified on the invoice, typically Net 7 or Net 14 days from issuance.
• Late Interest: Uncontested delinquent balances beyond the due date may accrue interest at the rate of 1.5% per month (18% annually), or the maximum rate permissible under Nova Scotia law, calculated daily until settled.
• Quote Validity: Formal written quotes remain firm and valid for 30 calendar days from the date of issue.

5. Client Data and Access

When you grant us access to your systems, cloud tenancies, or corporate data during an engagement:

• You retain 100% ownership: You retain exclusive, perpetual ownership of all files, databases, mail archives, cryptographic vaults, and business data at all times.
• Restricted Scope: We access, inspect, and transfer your data solely to the extent necessary to deliver the agreed migration and infrastructure tasks.
• Mandatory Pre-Migration Backups: You maintain primary legal and operational responsibility for verifying and maintaining comprehensive backups of all systems, accounts, and databases before any migration activities commence. While Open Stack Forge follows rigorous data protection runbooks and parallel staging procedures, we cannot accept liability for pre-existing corruption or data loss where appropriate client backups have not been verified.
• Prompt Access Revocation: You agree to revoke our administrative credentials, tokens, and SSH keys upon completion of the engagement, except where you retain us under an ongoing Managed Maintenance SLA requiring ongoing operational access.

6. Confidentiality

Both parties agree to treat all non-public information received from the other as strictly confidential. This encompasses technical infrastructure topologies, proprietary business metrics, employee personal records, system passwords, and strategic roadmaps.

Neither party shall disclose confidential information to any third party without prior written consent, except to authorized employees, contractors, and legal advisors bound by equivalent duties of confidentiality, or when compelled by lawful judicial process. These confidentiality covenants survive the termination or expiration of any engagement.

7. Intellectual Property

• Pre-Existing IP & Methodologies: Open Stack Forge retains all proprietary rights, title, and interest in and to our pre-existing automation scripts, deployment playbooks, architectural templates, calculation models, and consulting methodologies.
• Client Deliverables: Upon payment in full of all applicable fees, you receive full ownership of, or an irrevocable royalty-free license to, the customized configuration scripts, infrastructure documentation, and runbooks prepared specifically for your organization.
• Open-Source Software: All open-source software applications deployed (including Nextcloud, Vaultwarden, Mattermost, BookStack, and n8n) remain governed by their respective open-source licenses (such as AGPL, GPL, Apache, or MIT). Nothing in these Terms transfers proprietary ownership of third-party open-source software.

8. Warranties & Remedies

We warrant that our Services will be performed in a professional, workmanlike manner in accordance with recognized industry best practices for enterprise open-source systems architecture.

Disclaimer of Implied Warranties: To the maximum extent permitted by applicable law, except for the express warranties provided above, our Services and website are provided on an "as is" and "as available" basis. We make no other warranties, whether express, implied, statutory, or otherwise, including any implied warranties of merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose, non-infringement, or that the operation of any software will be completely uninterrupted or error-free.

9. Limitation of Liability

Exclusion of Consequential Damages: In no event shall Open Stack Forge, its principals, employees, or contractors be liable for any indirect, incidental, special, exemplary, consequential, or punitive damages, or for any loss of business, lost profits, lost revenue, loss of goodwill, data corruption, or business interruption, regardless of whether we were advised of the possibility of such damages.

Nothing in these Terms limits or excludes liability that cannot be legally excluded under Nova Scotia or Canadian federal law (such as liability arising from gross negligence or intentional willful misconduct).

10. Third-Party and Open-Source Software

Our Services incorporate the deployment and orchestration of independent open-source packages and commercial third-party services (such as Fastmail). These packages are provided "as is" under their individual software licenses.

Open Stack Forge is not responsible for upstream vulnerabilities, third-party vendor outages, breaking protocol changes, or feature deprecations in external software. For mission-critical environments, we strongly recommend enrolling in our Managed Maintenance plans to ensure ongoing CVE monitoring, patch validation, and automated rollback readiness.

11. Term and Termination

• Effective Term: These Terms become effective upon your first access to our website or upon signing an Engagement Agreement, and remain in full force until all engagements are completed or terminated.
• Termination for Cause: Either party may terminate an ongoing Engagement Agreement immediately upon written notice if the other party commits a material breach of these Terms or the Engagement Agreement and fails to cure such breach within fourteen (14) calendar days of receiving written notice specifying the breach.
• Payment on Early Termination: If an engagement is terminated prior to completion for any reason other than our uncured breach, you agree to compensate Open Stack Forge for all professional hours expended and non-refundable expenses incurred up to the effective termination date. We will promptly deliver all usable work-in-progress deliverables.
• Survival: Clauses that by their nature should reasonably survive termination — including Sections 4 (Fees & Taxes), 5 (Client Data), 6 (Confidentiality), 7 (Intellectual Property), 9 (Limitation of Liability), and 12 (Governing Law) — shall continue in full legal effect.

12. Governing Law and Dispute Resolution

These Terms and any project disputes arising out of or related to our Services shall be governed by, construed, and enforced in accordance with the laws of the Province of Nova Scotia and the federal laws of Canada applicable therein, without regard to principles of conflicts of law.

Both parties irrevocably submit to the exclusive jurisdiction of the provincial and federal courts situated in Nova Scotia for the adjudication of any legal proceedings, unless both parties mutually agree in writing to resolve the matter through binding commercial mediation or arbitration.

13. Changes to These Terms

We may revise these Terms of Service periodically to reflect operational changes, product adjustments, or statutory amendments. The latest version will always be posted on this page with the updated "Effective Date" prominently displayed.

For existing enterprise engagements, the Terms in force at the time your Engagement Agreement was executed will govern the engagement throughout its duration, unless you explicitly execute a written addendum adopting the updated terms.

14. Contact Information

For notices, contract inquiries, or legal correspondence regarding these Terms of Service, please contact our contracts office: