POP BOLL

DRAFT

Bollawax Device Licence

Version 1 · Status: draft, counsel review pending · Updated 2026-11-11

Draft, and not legal advice. This is the licence Pop Boll intends to grant to anyone who builds, sells or owns a device that runs Bollawax. Counsel has not reviewed it yet, and the wording may change before version 1 is final. Nothing on this page is legal advice.

You can build a device that runs Pop Boll's own software, sell it, and let your customers get updates, without asking us, registering with us or paying us. This page is the licence that says so. The specifications you build to are on the developer pages; the names you may and may not use are in the trademark policy.

1. Words. Pop Boll is Graham Smith, who publishes Bollawax. An Image is a Bollawax image Pop Boll publishes through images/<profile>/latest.json for a device profile. A layer is not an Image: the files of the Snipler Layer, published for the sniplerlayer profile, are covered by the Snipler Use Grant and not by this licence. A Genuine Image is an Image that has not been modified and whose signature verifies. A Compatible Device is hardware that meets the published Pop Boll device specification for that profile. The Service is bollawax.org, popboll.com, HAMS and the other services an Image talks to.

Draft note on "signature verifies". Images are not signed yet. Until Pop Boll publishes signed Images, an Image counts as genuine if it has not been modified and its size and sha256 match the latest.json record the Service publishes for it.

2. What you may do, free of charge. Download, install and run a Genuine Image on a Compatible Device you build, sell or own. Sell Compatible Devices with a Genuine Image preinstalled. Let the people who buy them receive updates from the Service. Write and ship your own hal module for your board (the hal is Apache-2.0, see LICENSE.md). You do not need to ask, register or pay.

3. Conditions. You may not modify an Image or distribute a modified one. You may not redistribute an Image except preinstalled on a Compatible Device or by pointing at the Service's own URLs. You may not work around access tiers, candles.txt, image signatures, licence checks or rate limits. You may not extract the band, the judges, the vocabulary, soundfonts or any corpus from an Image. Where an Image fetches a layer, the layer's own grant applies to it. Every physical device carries one device identity using a maker code you register (free, see the trademark and makers pages). Corpora, songs and other material reached through the Service stay under their own licences. You use the Service fairly: honour its rate limits and Retry-After, cache the way the Image does, and do not scrape or mirror it. Hacker mode on a device you own is yours to use, as the bollardeck specification describes; it does not extend this licence to anyone else.

4. Names. The names Pop Boll, Bollawax, Bollard, bollardeck, Bolltridge, Glass Snipler, PWHAMSS, Waxviewer, Boll Cap and Breakout Box belong to Pop Boll. A Compatible Device running a Genuine Image may say "Runs Bollawax". It may not be called a Pop Boll. The trademark policy has the details.

5. The Service. The Service is provided as is and may change. Pop Boll may refuse a device, a maker code or a player through candles.txt for breach of this licence or for abuse of the Service, and may stop publishing Images. There is no service level promise.

6. How long. Until ended. It ends for you automatically if you break §3. Devices already in the field keep the Image they hold and keep working offline, since a Boll never needs the Service to make songs, but they may lose Service access. Your customers' rights under this licence to the Image version they hold survive.

7. No warranty, no liability beyond what the law does not allow us to exclude.

8. Third-party components. Each Image ships a NOTICES.md listing its third-party components and their licences; bollawax.org serves it at /notices. LGPL components (FluidSynth and lame among them) keep their relinking rights: nothing in this licence limits what the LGPL lets you do with those components, including replacing them with a modified version.

9. Law. Open: to be decided by Pop Boll with counsel (governing law and venue). Until then: the law of the place where Pop Boll is established, and its courts; to be confirmed.

Questions we have put to counsel#

  • Whether a licence you never click binds you. Every Image's release record (latest.json) already points at this page; showing it at first boot is planned, not built.
  • Export rules for the cryptography inside an Image.
  • How "as is" (§5 and §7) sits with consumer law in the EU and the UK.
  • Whether §6 needs a notice period before a device loses Service access.
  • Governing law and venue (§9).

What is not built#

  • Images are signed from Bollawax 0.2.5: each release record is signed with Pop Boll's key, and a cart's boot helper refuses a release that is not. No cart has shipped yet, and a Boll does not run that helper yet, so a Boll still checks an Image by size and sha256 over a secure connection. The Snipler Layer is not signed yet.
  • No Image shows this licence at first boot yet.
  • There is no hacker mode on any device: the bollardeck specification describes it as planned.
  • Maker codes are registered by hand through the contact form on the developer pages; there is no self-service registry.
  • No Pop Boll hardware has shipped, and no third-party device has run an Image yet.

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