The rules of the OSAEI message board are as follows - and yes, these apply everywhere on the board:

1. NO ILLEGAL STUFF. Discussions that casually mention warez, for example, are fine but posting a link to a warez site is another. Since the site is operated in the U.S., U.S. law determines what is and isn't legal, so if it's legal elsewhere but not here don't post it here.

B. NO ADVERTISING. Casual mentions of a product or service are perfectly acceptable. Posting links for the singular purpose of advertising is not. Spambots/adbots will be banned on sight by the IP block.

3. Avatars must be reasonably sized - 100 pixels square or smaller - and must not be annoying or offensive. You must provide your own hosting for your avatar, and you can add the full URL to your avatar via your account settings. Moderators' opinions are subjective on what's not acceptable, but a good rule of thumb is that if it annoys anyone enough to report it we'll likely ask you to change it, or change/remove it for you. And no, we won't be enabling signatures.

D. Civility is required on this board. If you could get slapped across the mouth, or chased from someone's living room, for saying something in real life, don't type it here.

5. Please curb your profanity. We have minors visiting and posting to the board, so please keep it (reasonably) clean. ("Reasonably" because public school has enough profanity as it is.)

F. This board is not the place for hostilities, racist remarks, personal attacks, flaming, ad hominem attacks, etc. If you have a problem with something someone says, craft a rebuttal against their statement(s) but don't attack them personally. If you have a problem with someone specific, talk it out with them privately. If you don't wanna handle your issues in a mature manner, flame on and see how quickly we ban you.

7. Argue with a staffer and you're gone. Period. This board is not a democracy. The site staff has the discretion to make judgment calls on what is unacceptable on principle if not by rote, and their decisions are final.

H. The owner and staff of this site assume no responsibility or liability for the accuracy of ANYTHING posted here. We also assume no responsibility or liability for personal views and/or opinions expressed by anyone posting on this message board - such views and/or opinions are solely those of the poster.

These rules are additional to the OSAEI website TOS, which is as follows:

1. All projects on the OSAEI website are made freely available to the public for personal, non-commercial use only. Any commercial use or commercialization efforts of any design submitted to this website must be licensed and appropriate license fees paid. (The definition for "commercial use" is "if you receive compensation of any type or nature for it, it's commercial use.") For more information on commercial licensing, click here.

2. We assume no responsibility for what you do with the information on this website, nor do we assume any liability for what happens as a result of the use of information on this website. No warranties or fitness for any particular purpose are specified or implied. Nothing on this website is intended for use in life-support systems, and although all safety-related projects must by definition include safe failure avenues and fallbacks, we can not and do not guarantee any project will operate safely in any implementation. In slightly more comedic terms, we're not responsible for you wrecking your car or frying its electrical system, or any damage you do to your possessions, property, body, state of mind, or sanity by building and implementing any projects posted here.

3. Any information posted on the OSAEI message board is the property of its respective poster, but by posting information here you are posting into the public domain and specifically waive any claim to whether any posted information may be used. Posting on the Initiative site does not create any form of agreement or understanding between yourself and us. Any contributor may take and implement any information posted here without compensation or obligation to the poster, so long as there is no existing legal encumbrance (e.g., an active patent) to the use of such information. If you'd like to be credited for your ideas, become a collaborator, or better still, become a contributor and turn ideas into reality.

4. Any views expressed may not necessarily be representative of OSAEI's operations or policies.

5. Usage of the message board is subject to its own rules, and these are posted on the board itself. (See above!) By posting on the message board you are agreeing to abide by those rules. The moderators have rather liberal discretion to police and protect the board, and they can and will ban transgressors.