This Policy explains how we collect, use, and share your personal information.

  • We collect very little personal information about you.
  • We do not rent or sell your information to third parties.

By using Apertis Websites, you consent to this Policy.

We believe that information-gathering and use should go hand-in-hand with transparency. This Privacy Policy explains how information is collected from Apertis Websites, used and shared information we receive from you through your use of the Apertis Websites. It is essential to understand that, by using any of the Apertis Websites, you consent to the collection, transfer, processing, storage, disclosure, and use of your information as described in this Privacy Policy. That means that reading this Policy carefully is important.

We do not sell or rent your nonpublic information, nor do we give it to others to sell you anything. We use it to figure out how to make the Apertis Websites more engaging and accessible, to see which ideas work, and to make learning and contributing more fun. Put simply: we use this information to make the Apertis Websites better for you.

Definitions

Because everyone (not just lawyers) should be able to easily understand how and why their information is collected and used, we use common language instead of more formal terms throughout this Policy. To help ensure your understanding of some particular key terms, here is a table of translations:

When we say…

…we mean:

"Collabora Ltd." / "we" / "us" / "our"

Collabora Ltd., a company registered in the UK that operates the Apertis websites.

"Apertis Websites" / "our services"

Apertis Websites and services, including our main projects as well as mobile applications, APIs, emails, and notifications.

"you" / "your"

You, regardless of whether you are an individual, group, or organization, and regardless of whether you are using the Apertis Websites or our services on behalf of yourself or someone else.

"this Policy" / "this Privacy Policy"

This document, entitled the "Apertis Privacy Policy".

"contributions"

Content you add or changes you make to any Apertis Websites.

"personal information"

Information you provide us or information we collect from you that could be used to personally identify you. To be clear, while we do not necessarily collect all of the following types of information, we consider at least the following to be “personal information” if it is otherwise nonpublic and can be used to identify you:

(a) your real name, address, phone number, email address, password, identification number on government-issued ID, IP address, user-agent information, credit card number;
(b) when associated with one of the items in subsection (a), any sensitive data such as date of birth, gender, sexual orientation, racial or ethnic origins, marital or familial status, medical conditions or disabilities, political affiliation, and religion; and
(c) any of the items in subsections (a) or (b) when associated with your user account.

"third party" / "third parties"

Individuals, entities, websites, services, products, and applications that are not controlled, managed, or operated by Collabora Ltd.. This includes other Apertis users and independent organizations or groups who help promote the Apertis project such as user groups, as well as volunteers, employees, directors, officers, grant recipients, and contractors of those organizations or groups.

What this privacy policy does & does not cover

Except as explained below, this Privacy Policy applies to our collection and handling of information about you that we receive as a result of your use of any of the Apertis Websites. This Policy also applies to information that we receive from our partners or other third parties. To understand more about what this Privacy Policy covers, please see below.

For the sake of clarity, this Privacy Policy covers, regardless of language:

  • All of our major sites, such as the Apertis website, Apertis gitlab instance, including user pages, discussion pages, and noticeboards.
  • Our blogs and APIs (unless we have provided a separate policy for those services).
  • Our mobile sites and applications, which can be found on our official list.
  • Emails, SMS, and notifications from us or sent to us from you.

Use of information

Types of information we receive from you, how we get it, & how we use it

Your public contributions

Whatever you post on Apertis Websites can be seen and used by everyone.

When you make a contribution to any Apertis Website, including on Phabricator or the GitLab instance, you are creating a permanent, public record of every piece of content added, removed, or altered by you. We may use your public contributions, either aggregated with the public contributions of others or individually, to create new features or to learn more about how the Apertis Websites are used.

Unless this Policy says otherwise, you should assume that information that you actively contribute to the Apertis Websites, including personal information, is publicly visible and can be found by search engines. Like most things on the Internet, anything you share may be copied and redistributed throughout the Internet by other people. Please do not contribute any information that you are uncomfortable making permanently public, like revealing your real name or location in your contributions.

You should be aware that specific data made public by you or aggregated data that is made public by us can be used by anyone for analysis and to infer information about users, such as which country a user is from, political affiliation, and gender.

Account information & registration

You need to create an account to contribute to most Apertis Websites. You are not required to create an account to read most Apertis Websites.

If you want to create accounts, in most cases we require only a username, email address and a password. Your username will be publicly visible, so please be careful about using your real name as your username. Your password is only used to verify that the account is yours. Your IP address is also automatically submitted to us, and we record it temporarily to help prevent abuse.

Once created, user accounts cannot be removed entirely (although you can usually hide the information on your user page if you choose to). This is because your public contributions must be associated with their author (you!). So make sure you pick a name that you will be comfortable with for years to come.

To gain a better understanding of the demographics of our users, to localize our services, and to learn how we can improve our services, we may ask you for more demographic information, such as gender or age, about yourself. We will tell you if such information is intended to be public or private, so that you can make an informed decision about whether you want to provide us with that information. Providing such information is always completely optional. If you don't want to, you don't have to — it's as simple as that.

Information we receive automatically

Like other websites, we receive some information about you automatically when you visit the Apertis Websites. This information helps us administer the Apertis websites and enhance your user experience.

Because of how browsers work and similar to other major websites, we receive some information automatically when you visit the Apertis Websites. This information includes the type of device you are using (possibly including unique device identification numbers), the type and version of your browser, your browser's language preference, the type and version of your device's operating system, in some cases the name of your internet service provider or mobile carrier, the website that referred you to the Apertis websites, which pages you request and visit, and the date and time of each request you make to the Apertis Websites.

Put simply, we may use this information to enhance your experience with Apertis Websites. For example, we may use this information to administer the sites, provide greater security, and fight vandalism; optimize mobile applications, customize content and set language preferences, test features to see what works, and improve performance; understand how users interact with the Apertis Websites, track and study use of various features, gain understanding about the demographics of the different Apertis Websites, and analyze trends.

Information we collect

Emails

If you provide your email address, we will keep it confidential, except as provided in this Policy.

We may occasionally send you emails about important information.

You may choose to opt out of certain kinds of notifications.

You will need to provide an email address at the time of registration to be able to access certain portions of some of the Apertis Websites. If you do so, your email address is kept confidential, except as provided in this Policy. We do not sell, rent, or use your email address to advertise third-party products or services to you.

We use your email address to let you know about things that are happening with Apertis or the Apertis Websites, such as telling you important information about your account, letting you know if something is changing about the Apertis Websites or policies, and alerting you when there has been a change to a page or project that you have decided to follow. Please note that if you email us, we may keep your message, email address, and any other information you provide us, so that we can process and respond to your request.

You can choose to limit some of these kinds of notifications, like those alerting you if an page changes. Others, such as those containing critical information that all users need to know to participate successfully in the Apertis Websites, you may not be able to opt out of. You can manage what kinds of notifications you receive and how often you receive them by going to your Notifications Preferences.

We will never ask for your password by email (but may send you a temporary password via email if you have requested a password reset).

Location information

When you visit any Apertis Website, we automatically receive the IP address of the device (or your proxy server) you are using to access the Internet, which could be used to infer your geographical location. We keep IP addresses confidential, except as provided in this Policy.

Sharing

When may we share your information?

We may share your information when you give us specific permission to do so.

With your permission

We may share your information for a particular purpose, if you agree.

We will disclose your information in response to an official legal process only if we believe it to be legally valid. We will notify you of such requests when possible.

We may access, preserve, or disclose your personal information if we reasonably believe it necessary to satisfy a valid and legally enforceable warrant, subpoena, court order, law or regulation, or other judicial or administrative order. However, if we believe that a particular request for disclosure of a user's information is legally invalid or an abuse of the legal system and the affected user does not intend to oppose the disclosure themselves, we will try our best to fight it. We are committed to notifying you via email at least ten (10) calendar days, when possible, before we disclose your personal information in response to a legal demand. However, we may only provide notice if we are not legally restrained from contacting you, there is no credible threat to life or limb that is created or increased by disclosing the request, and you have provided us with an email address.

Nothing in this Privacy Policy is intended to limit any legal objections or defenses you may have to a third party's request (whether it be civil, criminal, or governmental) to disclose your information. We recommend seeking the advice of legal counsel immediately if such a request is made involving you.

If the Organization is Transferred (Really Unlikely!)

In the unlikely event that the ownership of Apertis changes, we will provide you 30 days notice before any personal information is transferred to the new owners or becomes subject to a different privacy policy.

In the extremely unlikely event that ownership of all or substantially all of the Apertis changes, or we go through a reorganization (such as a merger, consolidation, or acquisition), we will continue to keep your personal information confidential, except as provided in this Policy, and provide notice to you via the Apertis Websites at least thirty (30) calendar days before any personal information is transferred or becomes subject to a different privacy policy.

To protect you, ourselves & others

We, or users with certain administrative rights, may disclose information that is reasonably necessary to:

  • enforce or investigate potential violations of Apertis or community-based policies;
  • protect our organization, infrastructure, employees, contractors, or the public; or
  • prevent imminent or serious bodily harm or death to a person.

We, or particular users with certain administrative rights as described below, may need to share your personal information if it is reasonably believed to be necessary to enforce or investigate potential violations of this Privacy Policy, or any Apertis or user community-based policies. We may also need to access and share information to investigate and defend ourselves against legal threats or actions.

Apertis Websites are collaborative, with users writing most of the policies and selecting from amongst themselves people to hold certain administrative rights. These rights may include access to limited amounts of otherwise nonpublic information about contributions and activity by other users. They use this access to help protect against vandalism and abuse, fight harassment of other users, and generally try to minimize disruptive behavior on the Apertis Websites. These various user-selected administrative groups that have their own privacy and confidentiality guidelines. These user-selected administrative groups are accountable to other users through checks and balances: users are selected through a community-driven process and overseen by their peers through a logged history of their actions. However, the legal names of these users are not known to Collabora Ltd.

We hope that this never comes up, but we may disclose your personal information if we believe that it's reasonably necessary to prevent imminent and serious bodily harm or death to a person, or to protect our organization, employees, contractors, users, or the public. We may also disclose your personal information if we reasonably believe it necessary to detect, prevent, or otherwise assess and address potential spam, malware, fraud, abuse, unlawful activity, and security or technical concerns.

To our service providers

We may disclose personal information to our third-party service providers or contractors to help run or improve the Apertis Websites.

As hard as we may try, we can't do it all. So sometimes we use third-party service providers or contractors who help run or improve the Apertis Websites for you and other users. We may give access to your personal information to these providers or contractors as needed to perform their services for us or to use their tools and services. We put requirements, such as confidentiality agreements, in place to help ensure that these service providers treat your information consistently with, and no less protective of your privacy than, the principles of this Policy.

To Understand & Experiment

We may give volunteer developers and researchers access to systems that contain your information to allow them to protect, develop, and contribute to the Apertis Websites.

We may also share non-personal or aggregated information with third parties interested in studying the Apertis Websites.

When we share information with third parties for these purposes, we put reasonable technical and contractual protections in place to protect your information consistent with this Policy.

The open-source software that powers the Apertis Websites depends on the contributions of volunteer software developers, who spend time writing and testing code to help it improve and evolve with our users’ needs. To facilitate their work, we may give some developers limited access to systems that contain your personal information, but only as reasonably necessary for them to develop and contribute to the Apertis Websites.

When we give access to personal information to third-party developers or researchers, we put requirements, such as reasonable technical and contractual protections, in place to help ensure that these service providers treat your information consistently with the principles of this Policy and in accordance with our instructions. If these developers or researchers later publish their work or findings, we ask that they not disclose your personal information. Please note that, despite the obligations we impose on developers and researchers, we cannot guarantee that they will abide by our agreement, nor do we guarantee that we will regularly screen or audit their projects.

Because you made it public

Information that you post is public and can been seen and used by everyone.

Any information you post publicly on the Apertis Websites is just that – public. For example, if you put your phone number in a merge request comment, that is public, and not protected by this Policy. Please think carefully about your desired level of anonymity before you disclose personal information.

Protection

How do we protect your data?

We use a variety of physical and technical measures, policies, and procedures to help protect your information from unauthorized access, use, or disclosure.

We strive to protect your information from unauthorized access, use, or disclosure. We use a variety of physical and technical measures, policies, and procedures (such as access control procedures, network firewalls, and physical security) designed to protect our systems and your personal information. Unfortunately, there's no such thing as completely secure data transmission or storage, so we can't guarantee that our security will not be breached (by technical measures or through violation of our policies and procedures).

How Long Do We Keep Your Data?

We only keep your personal information as long as necessary to maintain, understand, and improve the Apertis Websites or to comply with UK law.

Once we receive personal information from you, we keep it for the shortest possible time that is consistent with the maintenance, understanding, and improvement of the Apertis Websites, and our obligations under applicable UK law. Non-personal information may be retained indefinitely.

Please remember that certain information is retained and displayed indefinitely, such as any public contributions to the Apertis Websites.

Important info

For the protection of the Apertis community and Collabora Ltd., if you do not agree with this Privacy Policy, you may not use the Apertis Websites.

Where is Collabora Ltd. & what does that mean for you?

You are consenting to the use of your information in Europe and to the transfer of that information to other countries in connection to providing our services to you and others.

Collabora Ltd. is a registered company based in Cambridge, UK with servers and data centers located in the UK. If you decide to use Apertis Websites, whether from inside or outside of the UK, you consent to the collection, transfer, storage, processing, disclosure, and other uses of your information in the UK as described in this Privacy Policy. You also consent to the transfer of your information by Collabora Ltd. from the UK to other countries, which may have different or less stringent data protection laws than your country, in connection with providing services to you.

Our response to Do Not Track (DNT) signals

We do not allow tracking by third-party websites you have not visited.

We do not share your data with third parties for marketing purposes.

We are strongly committed to not sharing nonpublic information with third parties. In particular, we do not allow tracking by third-party websites you have not visited (including analytics services, advertising networks, and social platforms), nor do we share your information with any third parties for marketing purposes. Under this Policy, we may share your information only under particular situations, which you can learn more about in the “When May We Share Your Information” section of this Privacy Policy.

Because we protect all users in this manner, we do not change our behavior in response to a web browser's “do not track” signal.

Changes to this Privacy Policy

Because things naturally change over time and we want to ensure our Privacy Policy accurately reflects our practices and the law, it may be necessary to modify this Privacy Policy from time to time. We reserve the right to do so in the following manner:

  • For minor changes, such as grammatical fixes, administrative or legal changes, or corrections of inaccurate statements, we will post the changes and, when possible, provide at least three (3) calendar days’ prior notice.

We ask that you please review the most up-to-date version of our Privacy Policy. Your continued use of the Apertis Websites after this Privacy Policy becomes effective constitutes acceptance of this Privacy Policy on your part. Your continued use of the Apertis Websites after any subsequent version of this Privacy Policy becomes effective, following notice as outlined above, constitutes acceptance of that version of the Privacy Policy on your part.

Thank you!

Thank you for reading our Privacy Policy.

This privacy policy went into effect on November 1st 2015.

This privacy policy was last updated on July 1st 2020.

Credits

The first version of this page was based on https://wikimediafoundation.org/wiki/Privacy_policy