OPENYARDAGE
OPENYARDAGE
OpenYardage is a free community platform for yardage books. What you read here is kept short because you are actually meant to read it. The most important point is section 2: what happens to a book that you make public.
THIS VERSION AS OF 29 JULY 2026
These terms apply to the use of OpenYardage. The provider is Mikail Ege, the full details are in the legal notice. Use is free of charge, there is no advertising and there are no paid functions.
You can view the platform without an account. An account only comes into being once you sign in, and it is needed in order to create your own books. You can end the user relationship at any time by deleting your account. No costs arise from this.
When you first sign in you choose a username. It is mandatory, and it is the only thing other users see of you. Your legal name is not stored, not even when the sign-in service passes it on to us.
The service is directed at persons aged 16 and over. Younger users need the consent of the holders of parental responsibility. The reason is not the content, golf is harmless. The reason is section 2: whoever publishes a book grants a licence that can no longer be withdrawn. An irrevocable grant of rights is not something a minor can validly declare on their own.
Your notes, strategies, club selection and drawings belong to you. You keep your copyright in them, in every case. What differs is solely what others may do with them. You decide that per book with the public or private switch.
If you make a book public, it is under the licence Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 International, CC BY-SA 4.0 for short. In plain words this means:
That is exactly what forking is: another user copies your book and adapts it for their own game. This is why every public book states who it comes from and with what handicap it is played. The attribution is part of the display and not an additional condition that you would have to take care of. Anyone who publishes a copy again themselves must leave the origin recognisable: the copy records which book it came from.
The licence in this section applies to what you contribute: notes, strategies, club selection, your drawings and markings. The hole diagram underneath comes neither from you nor from us, but from OpenStreetMap. It is under the Open Database License (ODbL) and stays that way even when your book as a whole is under CC BY-SA 4.0. Nobody can relicense this basis by way of a book, we cannot either.
For reuse the difference matters, and it is simpler than it sounds. Anyone who uses a book or a hole page as an image, that is looks at it, prints it, passes it on or reproduces it, is done with naming OpenStreetMap; that is already on every printout. Anyone who instead extracts the data, that is transfers coordinates, distances or areas into a database of their own, is working with the database itself and is thereby subject to the ODbL including its obligation to share alike.
Private books are not covered by the licence. In them you grant us only the right to store them, to process them technically and to display them to you. They are not visible to other users and cannot be forked.
We do not take any further rights for ourselves. We do not exploit your content outside the platform and we do not sell it.
| Public book | Private book | |
|---|---|---|
| Visible to | all visitors, with your username and handicap | only you |
| Licence | CC BY-SA 4.0 | no licence to third parties |
| Forking | anyone may copy and adapt, the copy is again under CC BY-SA 4.0 | nobody |
| If you delete | your book disappears, forks already made remain in existence | everything disappears |
You may only post content to which you hold the rights. With yardage books that is not a theoretical point, so here explicitly what does not work:
What you have observed yourself on the course you may of course write down: where you aim, which club you take, where it gets expensive. That is what this is about. What is not permitted is taking over other people's depictions.
If a piece of content infringes third-party rights, we remove it. In the case of serious or repeated violations we can block the account.
You can delete your books at any time. Public books may in the meantime have been forked, that is copied, by other users. These copies then belong to the respective users and remain in existence if you delete your original.
Two roles are to be distinguished here, and both stay visible. The user who forks is the author of their version: they answer for what they change and add. You remain named as the one from whom the version descends. That is not a courtesy but the attribution from section 2, and it cannot be switched off. It also continues if you delete your original, and it continues with a fork of a fork, so that the origin of a book can be traced back.
How to delete your account and your data as a whole is set out in the privacy policy.
A yardage book on this platform is the personal assessment of a golfer. It is not an official course document, not an official statement of the club and not a survey. The hole diagrams and the distances are produced from data from OpenStreetMap. This data can be inaccurate or out of date, courses are rebuilt, tees moved, greens redesigned.
We do not check the details in the books. For their correctness and for decisions that you or others base on them we are not liable. Authoritative are the markings on the course and the instructions of the Committee.
In all other respects statutory liability applies. In the case of intent and gross negligence as well as for injury to life, body and health we are liable without limitation. We do not exclude this liability.
Whether a printed book is permitted in a competition is decided by the Committee. Two points help with the assessment:
The player is responsible for the equipment used. If in doubt, ask the Committee before the round.
OpenYardage is a free leisure project. There is no entitlement to availability. Functions can change, be added or fall away, and there can be maintenance work and disruptions.
Should we discontinue the service, we will announce that with reasonable notice on the site and by email to the address stored in the account, so that you can secure your content beforehand.
Content that infringes rights or is inappropriate can be reported through the report function in the app or by email to oy@ege.gg. It helps to indicate which book or which course it concerns and what the problem is.
We look at every report and remove the content concerned as soon as we have knowledge of a violation. A general prior check of all content does not take place.
The hole diagrams are based on data from OpenStreetMap and are under the Open Database License (ODbL). Anyone who reuses this data must observe the conditions of the ODbL, in particular the attribution of the contributors.
The licence in section 2 applies to your own notes and drawings. It changes nothing about the ODbL for the underlying map data.
German law applies. Mandatory consumer protection provisions of the state in which you have your habitual residence remain unaffected by this.
For consumers the statutory place of jurisdiction remains. We make no agreement on jurisdiction to the detriment of consumers, it would be invalid.
We announce changes to these terms with reasonable notice on the site. If you do not agree with a change, you can delete your account. Authoritative is the version retrievable here at the time, the date is stated above.