Licence

1. Scope

This licence governs three things, and each is granted on different terms: the Runtime, the Shader Source of a Free Shader, and the Shader Source of a Professional Shader.

It is granted by shadertown, operated from the Netherlands and reachable at [email protected] (“we”, “us”), to the person or organisation exercising the rights below (“you”). It takes effect when you first download, copy or use the material it covers.

Our Terms govern your use of the site, the registry and your account. Where the two documents differ on what you may do with the material itself, this licence prevails.

2. Definitions

• Runtime — the shadertown npm package: the renderer, the React bindings, the command line tool, and the compiled form of every shader in the catalogue.
• Shader Source — the readable WGSL of a single shader, together with the preset, example and documentation delivered with it by the registry, the command line tool or a download from this site.
• Free Shader — a shader whose Shader Source we supply without payment. There are 16 of them; the catalogue marks each one.
• Professional Shader — any of the other 61 shaders, whose Shader Source requires a Paid Licence.
• Paid Licence — the rights granted under clause 6, held by one named person, obtained by paying for a plan on the pricing page.
• Credit — the link to shadertown that the Runtime draws in a corner of each canvas, as described in clause 5.
• Your Product — a website, application or other work that you make, in which a shader is one component among others.

3. The Runtime

The Runtime is licensed to everyone under the MIT licence. That licence governs it, not this page. The full text is in the repository.

The Runtime contains all 77 shaders in compiled form, so the MIT licence covers drawing any shader in the catalogue. What a Paid Licence buys is the readable Shader Source, not the ability to render it.

The Runtime performs no licence check and makes no request to us at runtime. Nothing in this licence, and no lapse of any plan, withdraws the MIT grant over a copy you already hold.

4. Free Shaders

We grant you a perpetual, worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free licence to use, modify and embed the Shader Source of a Free Shader in an unlimited number of personal and commercial projects, including projects you deliver to clients. No account and no payment is required.

This grant is conditional on clause 5. The restrictions in clause 7 also apply.

5. The Credit

The Runtime draws a small link in a corner of each canvas, naming shadertown and pointing to the page of the shader on screen. Where you use a Free Shader without a Paid Licence, keeping that link is the consideration for clause 4, and you must:

• leave the Credit visible wherever the shader is displayed;
• leave it as a working link, with its text and destination unchanged; and
• not obscure, cover, crop, or reduce the size or opacity of the Credit, whether by styling, by overlaying another element, or otherwise.

You may place the Credit in any of the four corners of the canvas, so that it need not conflict with your own interface. The documentation sets out how.

The Credit is removed by a single documented call in software you control. Making that call while relying on clause 4 is nevertheless a breach of this licence. Under a Paid Licence you may remove it freely (clause 6).

6. Paid Licences

On payment we grant you a perpetual, worldwide, non-exclusive, royalty-free licence to the Shader Source of every Professional Shader you download while the licence is active. You may:

• use it in an unlimited number of personal and commercial projects;
• ship it in work you deliver to clients;
• modify it to any extent;
• keep it in a private repository; and
• remove the Credit from every canvas, on every shader, Free Shaders included.

A Paid Licence is held by one named person and may not be shared, transferred or used by others. Where an organisation pays, it must name the individual who holds it. Write to [email protected] for a team arrangement.

The restrictions in clause 7 apply to a Paid Licence in the same way as to a free one.

7. What no licence permits

Whether you hold a Paid Licence or not, you may not:

• resell, sublicense or redistribute Shader Source as source;
• publish Shader Source in a public repository or any other publicly accessible location;
• include Shader Source in a template, theme, component library, catalogue or other work from which third parties obtain the source itself;
• use Shader Source in a product whose principal purpose is to distribute shaders, assets or templates; or
• share your licence or your registry credentials with anyone else.

The distinction throughout is the same one: ship it inside Your Product, not as the product. Modifying a shader does not lift these restrictions on the result.

Nothing here restricts the compiled shaders in the Runtime, which are MIT licensed under clause 3.

8. Duration and end of a licence

A Paid Licence does not expire. What can end is access to new downloads and to the registry, never the rights in clause 6 over Shader Source you have already obtained, and never code you have already shipped.

Where a Paid Licence was obtained under a subscription, which we no longer offer, it grants the rights in clause 6 over every file downloaded while that subscription was active, and those rights continue after it ends.

The rights in clause 4 do not expire and cannot be withdrawn, provided you meet clause 5.

A licence ends immediately if you breach clause 5 or clause 7 and do not correct the breach within 30 days of us telling you about it. On such an end you must stop using and distributing the Shader Source concerned. The MIT grant over the Runtime in clause 3 survives regardless.

A refund ends the Paid Licence it relates to from the date of the refund.

9. No warranty; liability

The Runtime and every Shader Source are provided as they are, without warranty of any kind, express or implied, including any warranty of merchantability, fitness for a particular purpose, or non-infringement. WebGPU support differs between browsers, devices and drivers, and we do not warrant that any shader will render on a given machine.

To the extent the law allows, our total liability arising out of or in connection with this licence is limited to the amount you paid us in the twelve months before the claim. Nothing in this clause excludes liability that cannot lawfully be excluded, and your statutory rights as a consumer are unaffected.

10. Changes, law and contact

We may amend this licence for future downloads. An amendment does not apply to Shader Source you have already obtained, which stays governed by the version in force when you obtained it. The date at the top records the current version.

Dutch law governs this licence, and the courts of the Netherlands have jurisdiction. If a provision is held unenforceable, the rest continues in force.

If your case is not covered above — a large team, an agency, something redistributed — write to [email protected] and we will answer plainly. See also our Terms and Privacy pages.