1. The short version
- Charlie is a local-first client for email accounts you already control; it is not an email
provider and does not guarantee delivery, retention, or availability.
- You remain responsible for your accounts, messages, recipients, backups, provider terms,
and use of Charlie.
- Charlie is early access software supplied without warranty. Our liability is limited as
far as applicable law permits.
- The software includes open-source components whose licenses continue to govern them.
2. Agreement and eligibility
These Terms of Service (the Terms) are an agreement between you and the
operator of OpenCharlie.com (Charlie, we, or
us). They govern the Charlie applications, OpenCharlie.com, downloads,
update delivery, and related support (together, the Service).
By downloading, installing, accessing, or using the Service, you accept these Terms and the
Charlie Privacy Policy. If you do not agree, do not use Charlie.
You must be at least 13 and old enough to form a binding contract where you live. If you use
Charlie for an organization, you represent that you are authorized to bind it. Consumer rights
that cannot lawfully be waived remain unaffected.
3. What Charlie provides
Charlie is software that connects to email services selected by you. It can retrieve, cache,
organize, display, compose, and send mail using provider interfaces such as Gmail OAuth, IMAP,
POP, and SMTP. Availability and behavior depend on your device, network, provider, account
permissions, server configuration, and recipients' systems.
Charlie does not promise that a message was sent, received, retained, classified, or deleted
merely because the interface appears to show that result. Confirm important actions with the
provider and intended recipient.
4. Early access
Charlie is pre-release software. You understand and agree that:
- it may crash, freeze, duplicate, omit, mis-group, mis-render, delay, or lose local data;
- mail actions may fail, be retried, or conflict with changes made through another client;
- features, formats, storage locations, compatibility, and system requirements may change;
- a build may expire or require an update, and we may suspend or discontinue a platform or
the Service without guaranteeing migration or continued support;
- documentation and marketing may not always match a beta build.
You are responsible for deciding whether Charlie is suitable for your use and for keeping
provider-side or independent backups of important data.
5. License
Subject to these Terms, we grant you a personal, limited, non-exclusive, non-transferable,
non-sublicensable, revocable license to install and use official executable builds of Charlie
for lawful personal or internal business purposes on devices you control.
Charlie is proprietary software, not open-source software. This license does not grant access
to or rights in Charlie's proprietary source code.
You may not sell, rent, sublicense, host as a service, bypass security or update integrity
controls, remove required notices, misuse Charlie branding, or represent a modified build as
an official release. These restrictions do not limit rights granted by an applicable
open-source license or non-waivable law.
6. Third-party open-source software
Charlie includes Flutter and other open-source components distributed under their own
licenses. Those licenses and notices govern only the corresponding components and prevail
over these Terms for those components if there is a conflict. Nothing here removes a right
granted by an applicable third-party open-source license, but those licenses do not grant
rights in Charlie's proprietary code. Charlie is not affiliated with or endorsed by an
upstream project merely because it uses that project.
7. Accounts, credentials, and providers
You may connect only an account you are authorized to access. You are responsible for provider
charges, credentials, OAuth grants, server settings, signatures, recipients, and compliance
with provider terms and organizational policies. Keep credentials and exported account
bundles confidential, promptly revoke access to a lost device, and notify the provider of
suspected compromise.
We do not control a provider and are not responsible for its outage, throttling, authentication
decision, spam filtering, message loss, policy, security incident, or account suspension.
Provider trademarks belong to their owners.
8. Acceptable use
You may not use the Service to:
- violate law, regulation, court order, contract, intellectual-property rights, privacy,
publicity rights, or another person's rights;
- send spam, phishing, malware, unlawful threats, harassment, fraudulent material, or
messages for which you lack required consent;
- gain unauthorized access, probe or disrupt systems, evade provider limits, impersonate
another person, or conceal the origin of unlawful traffic;
- interfere with our website, update service, downloads, security, or other users.
We may block access to our first-party services or take other proportionate action when
reasonably needed for security, legal compliance, or abuse prevention.
9. Your content
You retain rights in messages, attachments, account information, and other content you
process through Charlie. You grant us no license to that content merely by keeping it locally
in the application. If you deliberately send content to support, you grant us a limited
license to store, reproduce, and analyze it only as reasonably necessary to respond, secure
the Service, and satisfy legal obligations.
You are responsible for ensuring your content and communications are lawful and appropriately
backed up. We do not moderate or verify email content and do not assume responsibility for
content sent by you or received from others.
10. Third-party content and services
Messages may contain links, images, attachments, tracking resources, and content supplied by
third parties. Opening or downloading them may expose you to security and privacy risks.
Charlie's blocking, warning, and rendering features reduce some risks but are not guarantees.
Use appropriate judgment and endpoint security.
Third-party services are governed by their own terms and privacy policies. We are not a party
to your relationship with a provider, sender, recipient, website, or operating-system vendor.
11. Updates
Charlie may check for updates automatically and may notify you, open an official download
page, or offer an available update. Updates can add, change, or remove features and may be
required for security or continued compatibility. We do not guarantee any update, support
period, platform, or backward-compatible data format.
Install updates only from an official Charlie channel and verify platform security prompts.
If you decline an update, features may stop working and known security issues may remain.
12. Local data, exports, and backups
Most Charlie data is kept on your device or with your provider. We generally cannot restore
local data after corruption, device loss, uninstall, cache clearing, or forgotten export
passwords. You are responsible for backups and safe custody of downloaded attachments and
encrypted account bundles.
An encrypted bundle can contain credentials or OAuth material. Anyone with the bundle and its
password may be able to access the included accounts. Charlie cannot recover a forgotten
password and makes no guarantee that a future version will indefinitely import an old format.
13. Privacy
The Charlie Privacy Policy explains the information Charlie handles,
where it is stored, automatic connections, remote content, notifications, and your choices. It
is incorporated into these Terms by reference.
14. Feedback
If you submit ideas, suggestions, or bug reports, you grant us a worldwide, perpetual,
irrevocable, royalty-free license to use, reproduce, modify, publish, and incorporate the
feedback without restriction or compensation. This does not transfer ownership of unrelated
content included only to demonstrate a bug.
15. Intellectual property and branding
Except for open-source components and third-party marks, Charlie's official builds, website,
visual identity, name, logos, and original materials are owned by us or our licensors. These
Terms do not grant a trademark license. You may accurately say you use Charlie, but may not
imply endorsement or distribute a modified product under confusingly similar branding.
16. Suspension and termination
You may stop using Charlie at any time and remove the app and local data. We may suspend or
terminate access to first-party services, discontinue Charlie, or block an abusive client when
reasonably necessary for legal compliance, security, integrity, or material breach. Sections
that by their nature should survive—including ownership, disclaimers, liability, indemnity,
governing law, and general terms—survive termination.
17. Warranty disclaimer
In plain terms: Charlie is beta software. We cannot promise it
will preserve, deliver, display, or synchronize every message correctly.
TO THE MAXIMUM EXTENT PERMITTED BY LAW, THE SERVICE IS PROVIDED “AS IS” AND “AS
AVAILABLE,” WITH ALL FAULTS. WE DISCLAIM ALL EXPRESS, IMPLIED, AND STATUTORY WARRANTIES,
INCLUDING MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE, TITLE, NON-INFRINGEMENT, QUIET
ENJOYMENT, ACCURACY, SECURITY, AVAILABILITY, AND ANY WARRANTY ARISING FROM COURSE OF DEALING OR
USAGE OF TRADE. WE DO NOT WARRANT THAT CHARLIE WILL BE UNINTERRUPTED, ERROR-FREE, SECURE, OR
COMPATIBLE; THAT MESSAGES WILL BE SENT, RECEIVED, RETAINED, OR DISPLAYED; OR THAT DEFECTS OR
DATA LOSS WILL BE CORRECTED.
Some jurisdictions do not allow certain disclaimers, so some of this section may not apply to
you. Any legally required warranty is limited to the shortest period and narrowest scope the
law permits.
18. Limitation of liability
TO THE MAXIMUM EXTENT PERMITTED BY LAW, WE AND OUR CONTRIBUTORS, LICENSORS,
SERVICE PROVIDERS, AND AFFILIATES WILL NOT BE LIABLE FOR INDIRECT, INCIDENTAL, SPECIAL,
CONSEQUENTIAL, EXEMPLARY, OR PUNITIVE DAMAGES; LOSS OF PROFITS, REVENUE, BUSINESS,
OPPORTUNITY, GOODWILL, OR REPUTATION; LOSS, CORRUPTION, DISCLOSURE, OR UNAVAILABILITY OF DATA,
EMAIL, CREDENTIALS, OR ACCOUNTS; FAILURE TO SEND OR RECEIVE A MESSAGE; PROVIDER ACTION; OR THE
COST OF SUBSTITUTE SERVICES, EVEN IF ADVISED THAT SUCH DAMAGE IS POSSIBLE.
TO THE MAXIMUM EXTENT PERMITTED BY LAW, OUR TOTAL AGGREGATE LIABILITY ARISING OUT
OF OR RELATING TO THE SERVICE OR THESE TERMS WILL NOT EXCEED THE GREATER OF THE AMOUNT YOU PAID
US FOR CHARLIE DURING THE TWELVE MONTHS BEFORE THE EVENT GIVING RISE TO LIABILITY OR TWENTY-FIVE
U.S. DOLLARS (US $25).
These limitations allocate risk and are an essential basis of the agreement. They do not
exclude liability that applicable law does not allow us to exclude, including liability for
fraud, willful misconduct, or personal injury caused by negligence where non-waivable.
19. Indemnity
To the extent permitted by law, if you use Charlie on behalf of a business or organization,
that organization will defend, indemnify, and hold harmless us and our contributors, licensors,
providers, and affiliates from third-party claims, damages, losses, liabilities, and reasonable
legal costs arising from its content, unlawful use, provider or recipient dispute, or material
breach of these Terms. This section does not apply to an individual consumer where prohibited.
20. Governing law and disputes
These Terms are governed by the laws of the State of Missouri, United States, without regard
to conflict-of-law rules. Subject to non-waivable consumer rights, courts located in Jackson
County, Missouri have exclusive jurisdiction, and you consent to their personal jurisdiction.
Before filing a claim, each party will try in good faith for 30 days to resolve it by written
notice to the contact below.
Nothing here prevents either party from seeking urgent injunctive relief, and nothing removes
a right to bring a claim in a local forum that consumer law makes non-waivable.
21. Changes to these terms
We may update these Terms as Charlie, our services, or law changes. We will post the revised
version and change the effective date. For a material change, we will provide reasonable
additional notice in the app or on the website. Continued use after the effective date means
you accept the revised Terms; otherwise, stop using Charlie.
22. General
These Terms and the Privacy Policy are the entire agreement about the Service and supersede
prior discussions on that subject. If a provision is unenforceable, it will be limited to the
minimum extent necessary and the rest remains effective. Failure to enforce a provision is not
a waiver. You may not assign these Terms without our consent; we may assign them with a transfer
of the project or business. Headings are for convenience. Electronic notices satisfy writing
requirements where law permits.