About ToS;DR
“Terms of Service; Didn't Read” (short: ToS;DR) is a young project started in June 2012 to help fix the “biggest lie on the web”: almost no one really reads the terms of service we agree to all the time.
Background. The rough idea behind ToS;DR emerged during the 2011 Chaos Communication Camp near Berlin, with people from Unhosted a movement to create web apps that give users control over their valuable user data and privacy. In the summer of 2012, Hugo Roy started the legal analysis and brought the project to life. Since then, more people have joined the team and have contributed through the reviewer community. Ultimately, all the work is transparent and the discussions happen in public. Our work is funded by non-profits organisations and individual donations and gets released as free software and open data.
What does “ToS;DR” mean? the name is inspired by internet acronym TL;DR which stands for "Too Long; Didn't Read" and is often used on blogs and emails when a block of text is just really long and that people are too lazy to read the whole stuff. It was intended more as a code name than as a real name. But it seems that people like it (do you?)
Founders
Michiel de Jong
Code CommunistMichiel de Jong is an independent freedom hacker, travelling the world while programming for the revolution from his laptop. Apart from ToS;DR he is also involved in The Unhosted Unconference and he is a co-author of the remoteStorage protocol.
Jan-Christoph Borchardt
Design DictatorJan-Christoph Borchardt is a free culture interaction designer, advisor & educator. He curates open source web projects, designs unhosted web apps & NextCloud and teaches better usability.
Hugo Roy
Legal LiberatorHugo is an attorney at the Paris bar, and a volunteer at the Free Software Foundation Europe. He currently lives in Paris, where he is often referred to as a Zappa Freak.
Membres actuels de l'équipe
Tomasz Gębarski
Phoenix- and Community ManagerTomasz is a talented and passionate Python programmer with a strong interest in AI. He is also a dedicated reader of fiction and enjoys creating random programs and Discord bots. In his spare time, Tech enjoys doing some light translation work for open source projects. This allows him to use his skills and knowledge to help others and make a positive impact on the world.
Anciens membres de l'équipe
Ian McGowan
Ian received his MA in Forensic Linguistics, the study of language within a legal context, from Cardiff University, investigating consumer motivation behind reading, or not reading, online Terms & Conditions. He is currently living and teaching English in Seville, Spain in addition to contributing to ToS;DR.
Arlo James Barnes
Tautogrammatic TelecommunicatorArlo is a netizen who has been involved in the free culture movement for around a decade, and who discovered the wonderful world of ToS;DR indirectly through volunteering at Wikidata...and now can be found tooling about the discussion community in the hopes of helping others to add to the ratings database and also to find new and exciting uses for the data. IRL Arlo has a career at a public utility in a desert, but spends much time on the web nonetheless. Arlo is agender and may be referred to by whichever pronoun system you wish to use.