License
What you may do with what you bought, category by category. The rule of thumb: use it freely in your own work, including commercially; don’t republish it as a product of your own.
1. At a glance
| Category | Personal use | Use in commercial work | Redistribute the item itself |
|---|---|---|---|
| Applications | Yes | Yes — use the tool and its output freely | No |
| Code samples & templates | Yes | Yes — ship it in your product | No — not as a standalone library or asset pack |
| Documents | Yes — read, print for yourself | Yes — apply what you learn | No |
| Training videos | Yes — watch | Yes — apply what you learn | No — no re-hosting, no group screenings |
| Books & visual novels | Yes — read | No adaptation or derivative works | No |
This page sits underneath the Terms of Service and expands on
sections 6 and 7 of them. Where a specific item’s product page or bundled
LICENSE file states different terms, that item’s terms win.
2. The grant
On payment in full, we grant you a perpetual (for one-time purchases) or term-limited (for subscription access), worldwide, non-exclusive, non-transferable, non-sublicensable licence to use the item as described below. You are buying a licence, not the copyright. We retain all rights not expressly granted here.
One-time purchase means the licence does not expire and does not depend on this site continuing to exist. Subscription access means the licence lasts only while your All-Access Pass is active; when it lapses, your right to use the items ends, and you must stop using and delete any files obtained under it. Anything you legitimately built with a code sample while your pass was active, however, stays yours — see section 4.
3. Applications
The applications here — the PDF Vault interactive model, the Ren’Py framework generator, and anything that follows — are licensed for you to run and use, for personal projects or in the course of your work, including work you are paid for. There is no royalty on anything you produce with them.
The output is yours. A project framework generated by the Ren’Py generator, a vault structure modelled in the PDF Vault, or any other artefact an application produces for you belongs to you outright. Use it, sell it, publish it, license it however you like. We claim no interest in your generated output and we do not require credit for it.
You may not, however:
- redistribute the application itself, or host your own copy of it for others to use;
- offer the application as a service, whether free or paid;
- decompile, reverse-engineer, or repackage it in order to release a competing tool; or
- remove its copyright notices or rebrand it as your own.
You may inspect the client-side source that your browser downloads — it is right there, and we would rather you learned from it than not. What you may not do is republish it.
4. Code samples and templates
Snippets, configuration files, boilerplate, and template projects included in an application or document exist to be used. You may copy them into your own codebase — personal, internal, client, or commercial — modify them freely, and ship the result. No attribution is required, no royalty is due, and there is no obligation to open-source your project.
The one boundary is competition by repackaging: you may not extract the samples and publish them as a library, starter kit, template pack, course, or asset bundle that substantially reproduces what we sell. Building your game with the generated framework is exactly the point. Selling the generated framework as your own product is not.
Where a downloadable bundle contains its own LICENSE file, that file governs
that bundle and overrides this section.
5. Documents
A purchased PDF is licensed to one person. You may read it on as many of your own devices as you like, keep personal backups, and print a copy for your own reference. You may quote short extracts — a paragraph or a figure — in a review, article, presentation, or classroom discussion, with attribution to “What’s it to ya?” and a link to this site. That is fair quotation and it is welcome.
You may not:
- email, upload, or share the file with anyone else, including colleagues;
- post it to an intranet, shared drive, Discord, file-sharing site, or paste bin;
- include it in a course, bundle, or training package you distribute;
- reproduce substantial portions in your own publication; or
- strip watermarks or metadata identifying the purchase.
The knowledge is not restricted. Nothing stops you from applying a technique you read about, writing your own explanation of it in your own words, or teaching it to your team. It is the document, not the idea, that is licensed.
6. Training videos
Video is licensed for personal viewing by one person, by streaming. Unless a title explicitly offers a download, you may not download, capture, screen-record, or re-host it.
You may not hold public or group screenings, use the videos as teaching material in a course or bootcamp you run, or re-upload them anywhere. Clips are not licensed for reaction videos or compilations. If you want to use a video in training your team, that is a straightforward conversation — see section 9.
As with documents, whatever you learn is yours to use in your own work without restriction.
7. Books and visual novels
Fiction is licensed most narrowly, and deliberately so. A book purchase grants you a licence to read the work, in the on-site flip-book reader, for your own enjoyment. It does not supply you with a file, and it does not grant you any right to adapt the work.
Specifically, you may not:
- download, scrape, screenshot, or otherwise assemble the page images into a file;
- share your access with anyone else, or read it aloud in a public or recorded performance;
- produce an audiobook, translation, comic, screenplay, game, or any other adaptation;
- write and publish derivative fiction using the characters, world, or plot, whether or not you charge for it;
- publish substantial extracts; or
- use the text or artwork as training data — see section 8.
What you may do: quote a short passage in a review or in discussion with attribution, recommend the book to anyone at all, and share links to the free preview freely — please do. Non-commercial transformative fan work is not licensed here, but if you want to make something, ask; the answer is often yes with conditions.
Ren’Py visual novels, where offered as a downloadable build, are licensed as a single-person game licence: install on your own devices, play, keep backups. You may stream or record gameplay for non-commercial or monetised video channels — that is expressly permitted, and credit is appreciated — but you may not redistribute the build files or extract and reuse the art, script, or music assets.
8. Machine learning and AI
No item purchased here — and no item published on this site, purchased or free — may be used to train, fine-tune, evaluate, or ground a machine-learning model, nor uploaded into a retrieval or embedding corpus for redistribution. This applies to the book text and artwork especially, and equally to the documents, video transcripts, and application source.
This is not a blanket prohibition on you using AI tools. Pasting a snippet into an assistant to ask what it does, or having a model help you adapt a code sample inside your own project, is ordinary personal use and is fine. What is prohibited is contributing our work to a training corpus or a redistributable dataset.
9. Teams and multiple seats
Every licence sold here is a single-person licence by default. If several people at your organisation need the same document, video, or application, each needs their own — or you can ask us for a team or site licence, which is usually cheaper than buying individually and is always available.
Optional: state your team pricing here, e.g. “Team licences: 5 seats at 2× the single price, 20 seats at 5×.”
Email [email protected] with a rough headcount and what you need. Educational and non-profit use is normally discounted or free — just ask.
10. Attribution
Attribution is not required for code samples or for anything an application generates for you. It is required when you quote from a document, video, or book, and it should name the work and the site — for example: “Quoted from the PDF Vault architecture notes, What’s it to ya? (whats-it-to-ya.com).”
Where attribution is optional, it is still appreciated. A link is how small independent projects get found.
11. Third-party components
Some items bundle or depend on third-party open-source components — for example the Ren’Py engine itself, fonts, or JavaScript libraries. Those components remain under their own licences, which are included in the relevant bundle or listed on the item’s product page. Nothing on this page overrides them, and where a third-party licence grants you more freedom than we do, that freedom applies to that component.
You are responsible for complying with the licence of any third-party component you redistribute as part of your own project.
12. Name and logo
“What’s it to ya?”, the price-tag logo, and the site design are our trade marks and trade dress. Buying an item grants you no licence to use them. You may use the name and logo factually and without permission to refer to us — in a review, a link, a credits screen, or a list of tools you used. You may not use them as your own branding, imply we endorse or sponsor your product, or use them in a way likely to confuse anyone about who made what.
13. Term and termination
A one-time purchase licence runs perpetually. A subscription licence runs for as long as your pass is active. Either terminates automatically if you materially breach it — in particular by redistributing an item, circumventing access controls, or using an item as training data.
A refund also terminates the licence for the refunded item; see the Refund Policy. On termination you must stop using the item and delete any copies you hold. Work you had already lawfully created using code samples before termination remains yours to keep and to ship.
14. Asking for more
If you want to do something this page does not allow — an adaptation, a translation, a team rollout, use in a course, an unusual integration — ask. Email [email protected] with what you want to do and roughly how widely it would be seen. Permission is often granted, sometimes free, and it is far better for both of us than a guess. We reply to licensing questions in 2 business days.
See also: Terms of Service · Privacy Policy · Refund Policy