ShieldedStack Trial Agreement

Effective on the date the trial License Key is issued.

This Trial Agreement governs your use of ShieldedStack during a free 30-day evaluation. It's short on purpose. By installing the Software with a trial License Key, you accept these terms.

The parties are Bytebard, Denmark ("we", "us") and the organisation identified in the trial request form ("you", "your organisation").

1. What you get

We grant you a free, non-exclusive, non-transferable right to install and run the ShieldedStack software ("Software") on infrastructure controlled by your organisation for thirty (30) calendar days from the date the trial License Key is issued, solely to evaluate the Software.

You may connect the trial to real package registries, repositories, and CI/CD pipelines where that is necessary for evaluation. The trial is not a paid production licence and does not include production warranties, indemnities, support SLAs, or operational commitments. If you place the trial in a production path, you do so at your own risk.

Within a single installation, there are no limits on tenants, workspaces, or projects.

2. What we don't do

We don't phone home. The Software does not transmit usage data, scan results, package metadata, vulnerability findings, identities, or any other information to us during the trial. License Key validation is local.

Registry access is customer-initiated. Trial delivery uses Licensor-operated systems such as our private container registry. When you pull images, request support, or otherwise interact with those systems, standard access logs may be generated, including IP address, timestamp, account or credential identifier, and requested artifact or endpoint. These logs are not Software telemetry.

We don't watch. We have no automatic visibility into your installation. If we don't hear from you, we don't know what you ran or what you found.

We don't audit. During or after the trial, we will not request access to your systems, networks, or logs.

We may follow up with you by email to ask whether the trial was useful, whether you'd like a call, or whether you'd like to convert to a paid licence. You can ignore those emails without consequence to your trial.

3. What we ask of you

(a) Don't redistribute the Software or the trial License Key to anyone outside your organisation.

(b) Don't reverse engineer the Software except where mandatory law allows it (EU Directive 2009/24/EC, articles 5 and 6).

(c) Don't use the Software, Documentation, or our non-public technical information to copy or develop a substantially similar commercial product for external distribution. This does not prevent you from developing internal tools, integrations, policies, workflows, or security controls for your own use.

(d) Comply with the licences of any open source components shipped with the Software. A list is at https://shieldedstack.com/legal/oss-attributions.

4. What happens after 30 days

On day 31, the trial License Key expires.

Trial expiry is different from paid licence expiry. A paid licence has a post-expiry operational warning period under the Software License Agreement. A trial licence does not.

After trial expiration, the Software may block package proxying, scanning, policy enforcement, and mutating administrative operations until the trial is extended or converted to a paid licence. The control plane may remain available read-only so you can review historical data, export configuration, or decommission the installation.

If you decide not to license, you should stop using the Software and remove the trial License Key when the trial expires.

If you decide to license, we'll issue a paid License Key under the Software License Agreement and a signed Order Form. Your trial installation can usually be carried forward after licensing, subject to your own production-readiness review and any configuration changes needed for your environment.

5. Trial-tier feature scope

Unless otherwise agreed in writing, the trial gives you access to Standard-tier features. Enterprise- and Sovereign-tier features (FIPS-validated builds, air-gapped operation modes, custom SLAs, dedicated support) are not included in the trial by default. If you specifically need to evaluate Enterprise or Sovereign features, contact us and we'll issue a scoped trial.

6. Data and privacy

All data the Software processes stays on your infrastructure. We are not a processor or sub-processor of your data under the GDPR, because no processing relationship exists. The routine personal data we hold from the trial is the contact information you provided in the trial request form, private registry access logs, and any support communications you choose to send us, processed under our Privacy Policy.

7. No warranty, no liability

The Software is provided "as is" during the trial, with no warranties of any kind, express or implied, including merchantability, fitness for purpose, production readiness, and non-infringement.

Our total liability to you arising from the trial is capped at €100. We're letting you use the Software for free and we don't want surprises on either side. If you need stronger commitments — warranties, indemnification, production support, support SLAs — you need a paid licence.

This cap does not apply to liability that cannot be excluded under mandatory applicable law.

8. Confidentiality

Both parties may exchange non-public information during the trial (technical details, your evaluation findings, our roadmap, your architecture). Each side will treat the other's non-public information as confidential, will use it only to support the trial, and will not disclose it to third parties without consent. This obligation lasts two (2) years after the trial ends.

The trial License Key is our confidential information. Don't share it.

9. Ending the trial early

You can stop using the Software at any time, no notice required. We can revoke the trial License Key at any time if we believe it's being misused — for example, if we receive specific evidence that the trial Key has been shared outside your organisation. We'll email you before revoking, except where speed is needed to prevent abuse.

10. Governing law

This Trial Agreement is governed by the laws of Denmark. Disputes go to the Copenhagen City Court (Københavns Byret).

11. Relationship to the main Software License Agreement

This Trial Agreement is self-contained for the trial period. If you sign an Order Form for a paid licence, the Software License Agreement takes over from that date forward and governs everything except trial-period conduct (which remains governed by this Trial Agreement).

Questions about this Trial Agreement should be directed to [email protected].