Terms
Terms
vxKite's licence agreement is below word for word, as it ships inside the app (About opens it). Then the third-party notices, and the source of the HEIC decoder.
The licence agreement
vxKite — End User License Agreement
© 2026 Deane Carstensen. All rights reserved. Software: vxKite desktop application, version 0.99 and 1.x (the "Software") Licensor: Deane Carstensen ("Licensor", "I", "me") Licensee: the person or business that paid for the Software, or that received a copy from me at no charge ("you")
This is the license actually in effect. It was written by the author, not by an attorney, and it has not been reviewed by one. It is deliberately short and deliberately plain. Where it is plain, it means what it says.
By installing or using the Software you agree to it. If you do not agree, do not install or use it.
1. What you are buying
A perpetual, non-exclusive, non-transferable license to install and use vxKite 1.x on computers you own or control, for your own work or your business's work.
"Perpetual" means it does not expire and does not renew. This is not a subscription.
It is not counted in seats. One purchase covers the machines your shop actually runs the Software on — the laptop you take to a deposition, the desk machine you prep on, the spare you keep in the bag. It does not cover installing it for a different business, reselling it, or handing copies to people outside your shop.
Version 1.x is included. A future 2.x, if there ever is one, may be a separate purchase.
A copy I give you at no charge — a pre-release such as 0.99 — is licensed on these same terms, for you to try in your own work, until 1.0 is released or I tell you that it ends.
2. No account, no key, no phone-home
The Software has no license key, no activation, no account, and no update service. It does not contact a server, mine, or anyone else's. Nothing about your use of it is reported anywhere. (On Windows the installer may download Microsoft's WebView2 runtime on a PC that lacks it; the web engine is the system's own. The camera and screen sharing show what you choose in vxKite's own windows; nothing is recorded or sent.)
If a "check for updates" ever exists in a later version, it will be a link you click, not a background call.
3. What the Software is
A local, folder-based program for opening, displaying and presenting digital files, with exhibit labeling built in. You point it at a folder on disk. It opens the files that are already there and shows them — in one pane or two, and in a second window for the room — lets you mark them as exhibits, applies an exhibit sticker — the built-in plate or your own artwork — and batch-stamps a whole folder at once.
4. What the Software is not
It is not legal advice, and I am not your lawyer.
It is not a guarantee that any court, agency, arbitrator, or opposing counsel will accept a file the Software has stamped. Whether a stamped exhibit is acceptable is governed by the rules and the people in that room, not by this program.
It is not a chain-of-custody service, a system of record, or an evidence custodian. It writes files to your disk; it does not attest to them.
It is not a medical device. The medical images and signals it shows (DICOM, NIfTI, GIfTI, EEG and ECG) are for display, not for diagnosis or treatment.
A signature drawn in the Software and placed on a page is a picture of your mark on a copy of the document. It is not an electronic signature under any statute, carries no certificate, and proves nothing about who placed it.
You are responsible for checking your own work — that exhibit numbers are right, that the stamped output says what you meant it to say, and that the files you rely on in a proceeding are the files you think they are. Verify before you rely on it.
5. Your files stay yours
I claim nothing in the documents, video, images, exhibit records, or artwork you open, create, or stamp with the Software.
It does not overwrite your originals. A stamped exhibit is a new file; the clean copy stays where the Software put it.
Exhibit work — marked and stamped copies, exhibit lists, split pages, signed copies, captures, annotations, guided jobs, and the Software's own small bookkeeping files — is written inside the job folder you chose, in one folder there named vxKite; the exhibit record (marked-list.md, marked-list.json, and a lock file while a change to it is being made) sits at the job folder's top. A job folder begun before version 0.99 keeps these at its top until you choose to tidy it into one folder. With no job folder open, what you make (a signed copy, an extract or a merge, a video's markers, a panel map, an album's edits, a music library's words) goes to a vxKite folder in your Documents folder instead.
Opening a file writes nothing beside it. A copy the Software makes only to show a file — the PDF rendering of an Office document, some TIFFs, a JPEG 2000 picture, an email attachment you opened, the pictures of a guided stop — is a complete copy, kept in the Software's own cache folder on your computer for up to 30 days after it was last used, even after the original is gone, and never more than 2 GB in all. Clear Cache (File → Clear Cache on a Mac, the kite's menu on Windows, or typed .clear cache) empties it at once: do that when a case's materials go back. What you make about a file — a video's markers, a panel map, hotspots, a media map, an album's edits, a music library's words and playlists — is written only when you make it, in the job folder's vxKite/Sidecars/ (beside the file, in a job folder begun before 0.99 and not tidied); a capture of a view goes to the job's vxKite/Captures/, and an exhibit list you ask for to its vxKite/Exhibit Lists/.
On your computer only, it also keeps a diagnostic log — the files you open and their paths, the lines its status bar showed, and its own errors; never a file's contents, and never the words you type to search for. It stays under about 2 MB, in ~/Library/Logs/com.vxkite.desktop/ on a Mac or %LOCALAPPDATA%\com.vxkite.desktop\logs\ on Windows; delete that folder to delete it. It also keeps your recent jobs and where you were in them, your settings, a signature you choose to save (Documents/vxKite/Signatures/), and the sticker labels you keep as favourites (Documents/vxKite/Stickers/). None of it is sent anywhere; the typed .log copies the log to Documents/vxKite/ for you to send if you choose. The manual (docs/manual.md §7) lists every place and how to remove each one.
Documents the Software converts to PDF (Word, PowerPoint and Excel files, OpenDocument, RTF, some TIFFs, JPEG 2000) are derived copies of your own files. They are yours on the same terms as the originals.
A copy made from a locked PDF is not locked. When a PDF asks for a password, or its owner has restricted what may be done with it, the copies the Software writes from it — a stamped exhibit, extracted or merged pages, a signed copy — carry no password and no restriction. Make them only when you have the right to.
If you supply your own sticker plate art, it remains your art. Placing it in the Software's plate folder grants me no rights in it.
6. Third-party components
The Software is built on open-source components — pdf.js (with its OpenJPEG decoder), pdf-lib, epub.js, JSZip, three.js, Typst, office2pdf, dicom-rs, lopdf and the rest of the Rust crate graph, all inventoried in THIRD-PARTY-LICENSES.md, which ships with the application — and, for RAR comics, on RARLAB's UnRAR, carried as WebAssembly under its own freeware licence (extract-only; the Software writes no RAR archives) — whose licence asks that this paragraph of it be given here: "UnRAR source code may be used in any software to handle RAR archives without limitations free of charge, but cannot be used to develop RAR (WinRAR) compatible archiver and to re-create RAR compression algorithm, which is proprietary. Distribution of modified UnRAR source code in separate form or as a part of other software is permitted, provided that full text of this paragraph, starting from "UnRAR source code" words, is included in license, or in documentation if license is not available, and in source code comments of resulting package." — and, for HEIC pictures on Windows, on libheif and libde265 (struktur AG), carried as WebAssembly under the LGPL-3.0 in two files of their own — the heif folder beside vxkite.exe, outside the program itself — which you may replace with your own build of that library; the folder's README says how, and where the library's source is. The Mac version does not include them. Those components stay under their own licenses. Nothing in this Agreement limits your rights under, or imposes obligations inconsistent with, any of them — including your right to modify those libraries and to reverse-engineer the Software as far as needed to debug such modifications.
For the current license identifiers and obligations, see THIRD-PARTY-LICENSES.md.
7. As-is, and the limit of what I owe you
THE SOFTWARE IS PROVIDED "AS IS", WITHOUT WARRANTY OF ANY KIND, EXPRESS OR IMPLIED, INCLUDING MERCHANTABILITY, FITNESS FOR A PARTICULAR PURPOSE, AND NON-INFRINGEMENT. I do not warrant that it will be uninterrupted, error-free, or free of data loss.
Concretely: the Software can fail visibly, and a visible failure is not by itself a breach of this Agreement. A video codec your machine does not have. A HEIC image the system will not decode. A path too long for the filesystem. A malformed PDF. In those cases the Software is expected to say so and stop, and saying so and stopping is the correct behavior, not a defect I owe you money for. If it fails silently or damages your originals, tell me — that is a bug.
Liability cap: the amount you actually paid for the Software (nothing, for a copy given at no charge). To the maximum extent permitted by law, I am not liable for indirect, incidental, special, consequential, or punitive damages, or for lost profits, lost data, lost records, business interruption, or cost of substitute products — and my total liability for anything arising out of the Software or this Agreement will not exceed what you paid for it.
Some jurisdictions do not allow some of these exclusions, in which case they apply to you only as far as the law allows.
8. Unsigned builds
The macOS and Windows builds carry no developer certificate today: the Mac app is sealed with its own (ad-hoc) signature but is not signed with an Apple Developer ID or notarized, and the Windows setup is not Authenticode-signed. macOS will say Apple could not verify the app and, after that first try, offer Open Anyway in System Settings → Privacy & Security; Windows SmartScreen and UAC will report an unknown publisher. That is what such a build looks like. It is not a defect and not a malware finding. See docs/unsigned-build.md for how to open it.
If the Software is code-signed in a later release, that changes the installer experience and nothing in this license.
9. Restrictions
You may not sell, rent, lease, sublicense, or host the Software as a service to third parties; remove or obscure its copyright or branding; or use it to build a competing product. You may not represent it as your own work.
Reasonable backup copies and installing on your own shop's machines are fine — that is section 1.
10. Ownership
The Software is licensed, not sold. I retain all right, title, and interest in it, including its intellectual property. This Agreement grants you no rights in the vxKite name or branding.
11. Term
This Agreement runs until terminated. It terminates if you materially breach it and do not fix the breach within 30 days of my telling you about it. Sections 4, 5, 7, and 10 survive.
12. Governing law
This Agreement is governed by the laws of the Commonwealth of Massachusetts, excluding its conflict-of-laws rules.
13. General
This is the entire agreement about the Software and replaces anything said before it. If a provision is unenforceable, it is narrowed to the minimum extent needed and the rest stands. My not enforcing something once is not a waiver of it. You may not assign this Agreement without my consent; I may assign it if I sell the business.
14. Contact
Support address: support@vxkite.com Every other mention of a support address — About, the third-party notices, the HEIC decoder's README — means this one.
Third-party notices
vxKite carries open-source components; every licence text is in THIRD-PARTY-NOTICES.txt (plain text, about 1,318 KB), the same file the app carries.
The HEIC decoder's source
On Windows, vxKite opens HEIC pictures with libheif 1.23.2 and libde265 1.0.15, carried as WebAssembly (libheif-js 1.23.2) in two replaceable files in the heif folder beside the program. libheif and libde265 are © struktur AG, under the GNU Lesser General Public License v3.0; nothing in them is changed.
The source for exactly these versions is published by their authors: github.com/strukturag/libheif, github.com/strukturag/libde265 and github.com/catdad-experiments/libheif-js. You can also ask for a copy at support@vxkite.com; that offer stands for three years from the date of the vxKite build that carried them.