Terms of Service

TurtleStitch is a free and open source platform for generating and sharing patterns for embroidery machines. It builds upon Snap! developed by Jens Mönig, Brian Harvey and a long list of other great contributors. It is licensed under the GNU Affero General Public License, which permits unlimited use for any purpose by anyone, but does not allow proprietary modified versions of the software; if you make a modified version of TurtleStitch, you must make it available under the same terms as our version, including the provision of source code.

Our goal is to foster a friendly, welcoming, safe community of TurtleStitch users. These Terms of Service have that goal in mind.


User Content and Sharing

At Turtlestitch.org, we encourage open sharing to support our creative community. By default, projects shared on Turtlestitch.org are publicly available, fostering collaboration and learning. However, if you prefer, you have the option to unshare your projects at any time, as detailed in our Privacy Policy.

  • - License for User Projects: All projects shared on Turtlestitch.org are licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike (CC BY-NC-SA) license. This means others are free to use, modify, and share your work as long as they give proper credit, do not use it for commercial purposes, and share any adaptations under the same license.


Community Guidelines

We are dedicated to maintaining a respectful and supportive community. Our community includes children, and people of all cultures, religions, political views, and so on. You may not share anything that could reasonably be considered offensive to others. We reserve the right to revoke the shared status of anything that, in our sole judgment, is offensive to our community standards. To help create a welcoming environment, please follow these simple rules:

  • - Be respectful: Communicate with others in a polite and constructive manner.
  • - No offensive content: Content that promotes hate speech, sexually explicit or graphically violent material, or harassment is not allowed.
  • - No activities: that violate the law, infringe on the rights of others, or disrupt the site’s functionality is strictly prohibited.
  • - Report misuse: If you see content or behavior that violates our guidelines, please report it to us.

We reserve the right to remove any content or users that do not follow these guidelines.


Intellectual Property and Copyright

Turtlestitch.org respects the intellectual property rights of others. If you believe that your work has been used or shared on the platform in violation of copyright, please refer to our DMCA Disclaimer for instructions on how to file a complaint.


Privacy and Data Protection

Your privacy is important to us. Please refer to our Privacy Policy for detailed information on how we collect, use, and protect your personal data.

Take care to not share any personally identifiable information (such as your name, address, birthday, etc). in your projects.


Limitation of Liability

Turtlestitch.org is a free, educational platform designed to foster creativity. However, we cannot be held responsible for any issues or losses that might arise from the use of the platform, including but not limited to:

  • - Data loss: While we strive to provide a reliable platform, we cannot guarantee that your content will always be available or safe from loss.
  • - Third-party content: We are not responsible for any content shared by other users or any consequences that may result from using or modifying that content.
  • - Bugs or errors: Turtlestitch.org is built on open source software, and while we do our best to maintain it, we cannot guarantee that it will always be free of bugs or technical issues.


By using the platform, you agree to use it “as is” without warranties of any kind.