SUPPORT AND UPDATE POLICY

Application: Seaworthy (za.co.digitalfreedom.seaworthy)

How long the software is maintained, and what that promise means

Effective Date: 5 October 2026

Provider: DigitalFreedom Global LLC (trading as DigitalFreedom)

1. THE COMMITMENT

The support period for each app is at least five years from the day that version is placed on the market. It is stated with month and year in the store listing and in the in-app product information, so that it is known to the buyer at the moment of purchase.

That floor is the whole commitment. Whether an app remains available, gains features, or is withdrawn is a business decision this Policy does not promise anything about — § 4 describes what happens on withdrawal. What the five years guarantee is that a version you acquired keeps receiving the security and conformity updates it needs, for the stated period, whether or not the app is still sold.

Transition note: versions placed on the market before 2026-09-01 were accompanied by an earlier version of this Policy that additionally promised updates for as long as the app is offered plus two years after withdrawal. For those versions, that promise stands.

2. WHY THIS DOCUMENT EXISTS

Two separate obligations meet here, and they are usually confused with each other.

§ 327f BGB and Art. 8(2) of Directive (EU) 2019/770 require the trader to provide updates — including security updates — that are necessary to keep a digital product in conformity, for the period the consumer may reasonably expect. For a continuously supplied product such as a subscription, that is the whole contractual term. This duty cannot be excluded: Art. 22 of the Directive makes it mandatory.

Art. 13(8) of Regulation (EU) 2024/2847 (Cyber Resilience Act) will require, from 11 December 2027, that a support period be determined and published, and that it reflect how long the product is reasonably expected to be in use.

They are not the same thing, and conflating them is the mistake this section exists to avoid. § 327f is a duty measured against the consumer’s reasonable expectation — open-ended, assessed after the fact, and for a subscription it runs for the whole contractual term. Art. 13(8) CRA requires a determined and published period, known at the point of sale, expressed as a concrete span.

A formula such as “as long as the app is offered, plus two years” satisfies the first and fails the second: at the moment of purchase it yields no end date. Hence the fixed five-year floor in § 1 — a determined, published span, known at purchase, and deliberately not padded with open-ended promises that a one-person company cannot guarantee to keep.

3. WHAT AN UPDATE COVERS

Included	Not included
Security fixes	New features
Fixes required to keep the app working on supported OS versions	Support for OS versions the platform vendor has itself dropped
Fixes required to keep the described functionality available	Changes to the described functionality
Changes required by law or store policy	Changes requested by an individual user

4. WITHDRAWAL OF AN APP

An app may be withdrawn from sale at any time — continued availability is not promised anywhere in these documents. What is regulated is how, and what survives:

The withdrawal is announced in Seaworthy at least 30 days in advance, stating the date and the end of the support period that follows from it.
Security and conformity updates continue for versions already acquired, until the support period stated for that version ends (§ 1). Withdrawal from sale does not shorten it.
Seaworthy Pro is a one-time purchase. There are no subscriptions to wind down. Mandatory refund and remedy rights remain as described in the Refund Policy.
Apps that work locally keep working. Withdrawal removes the store listing and ends server-side services; it does not reach into your device.

An app removed from sale without such an announcement continues to be supported. The clock does not run on a decision the user was never told about.

5. RIGHT TO CHANGE THE SERVICE

The service may be changed during the contractual term only where there is a valid reason, which is limited to:

adapting to a change in law, case law or a store policy
closing a security vulnerability
maintaining compatibility with an operating system or a platform service
replacing a third-party service that is discontinued by its provider

Any such change is announced 30 days in advance where it is not required to be immediate for security reasons. Where a change materially disadvantages the user, the user may terminate the contract free of charge before it takes effect, and the store’s cancellation route applies.

Discontinuation of the service as a whole is not a change under this section; it is the withdrawal under § 4.

6. WHAT THIS DOES NOT AFFECT

The statutory rights for digital products under §§ 327 ff. BGB and the national implementations of Directive (EU) 2019/770 apply in full and are not limited by anything above.

7. CONTACT

Support: https://support.apps.digitalfreedom.co.za Security reports: mailto:security@digitalfreedom.co.za · https://security.digitalfreedom.co.za