BUSY Bar Apps Hackathon: Official Rules

Last updated: November 12, 2026

NO PURCHASE NECESSARY. VOID WHERE PROHIBITED.

The BUSY Bar Apps Hackathon is not sponsored, endorsed, or administered by, or associated with, GitHub, Discord, Meta, X, or any other social media platform.

1. ORGANIZER

1.1 The BUSY Bar Apps Hackathon (the “Hackathon”) is organized by Flipper Devices, Inc., 2803 Philadelphia Pike, Suite B #551, Claymont, DE 19703, USA (the “Organizer,” “we,” or “us”). You accept these Official Rules (the “Rules”) by taking any step to enter the Hackathon, including by checking the box in the pull request template confirming that you enter the Hackathon and accept these Rules or opening a pull request for the Hackathon as described in Section 4. If you are under 18 (or under the age of majority where you live), your parent or legal guardian must also agree to these Rules (see Section 3.2).

1.2 The BUSY Bar Apps Catalog (the “Catalog”) is operated by Flipper FZCO. Submitting an app to the Catalog is governed by the Catalog’s Terms for Authors, published in the Catalog repository (the “Terms for Authors”). These Rules apply in addition to the Terms for Authors and govern only your participation in the Hackathon.

2. HACKATHON PERIOD

2.1 You can enter the Hackathon from November 13, 2026, 00:00 UTC to December 7, 2026, 23:59 UTC (the “Entry Period”). We will announce the winners on December 11, 2026.

3. WHO CAN ENTER

3.1 You can enter if, at the start of the Entry Period, you are a legal resident of the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom, Australia, or a member state of the European Union. If the law of a particular country or region requires registration or other formalities for the Hackathon that we do not complete, we may exclude that country or region by updating these Rules before the Entry Period starts.

3.2 You must be at least 16 years old. If you are under 18 (or under the age of majority where you live), you need your parent’s or legal guardian’s permission to enter. If you win, we will ask for your parent’s or legal guardian’s written consent before we award the prize.

3.3 Employees, officers, directors, and contractors of Flipper Devices, Inc., Flipper FZCO, and their affiliates, members of the judging panel, and their immediate family and household members cannot enter.

3.4 You cannot enter if you are a resident of a country or territory subject to comprehensive sanctions, or if you are listed on, or owned or controlled by a person listed on, a sanctions list of the United States, the European Union, the United Kingdom, or another applicable jurisdiction.

3.5 We ship prizes only to the winner, at an address in the eligible country where the winner lives. We do not ship prizes to third parties or to addresses intended for forwarding to another country.

3.6 If you build an app together with others, the person who opens the pull request is the entrant and receives any prize or promo code for that app.

4. HOW TO ENTER

4.1 To enter, during the Entry Period, open a pull request with your app to the Catalog repository at https://github.com/busy-app/busy-apps-catalog, following the Terms for Authors. In the pull request template, check the box confirming that you enter the Hackathon and accept these Rules, and select a Hackathon category (see Section 5).

4.2 You do not need a BUSY Bar to take part. You can build and test your app with the BUSY Bar emulator at https://github.com/busy-app/busybar-emulator.

4.3 Each app is a separate entry. You may enter several apps. To be eligible for a prize or a promo code, your app must be submitted to the Catalog for the first time during the Entry Period, and approved and published there by December 10, 2026.

4.4 By entering, you confirm that:

• (a) your entry is your own original work, and you have all rights needed to submit it, including for any third-party code, images, sounds, or other content it uses;
• (b) your entry does not include confidential information of your employer or anyone else, and, if your employer’s policies require it, you have your employer’s permission to enter; and
• (c) your entry and any post about it comply with applicable law and with the rules of GitHub, Discord, and the social media platform you use, and do not contain offensive, misleading, or unlawful content.

5. CATEGORIES

5.1 The Hackathon has 10 categories, which match the categories of the Catalog: Productivity, Clock & Time, Info & Feeds, Social, Dev & Monitoring, Music, Art, Games, Smart Home, and Utilities. When you enter, select the category that fits your app best.

5.2 Each app can compete in only 1 category. If an app clearly fits another category better, we may move it and will tell you before the Entry Period ends.

6. JUDGING

6.1 A multidisciplinary panel of judges from the BUSY product, marketing, engineering, and design teams will evaluate the apps. Each judge forms their opinion independently. The judges consider the following criteria together, without scores or weights:

• (a) usefulness;
• (b) originality;
• (c) quality and cleanliness of the code;
• (d) well-designed UX and ease of use; and
• (e) aesthetics.

6.2 The evaluation is impartial but subjective. The judges choose the winners jointly. Social media posts (see Section 8) are not judged, and likes, views, or shares do not affect the result. The judges’ decisions are final.

6.3 We judge each app as of the version specified in its pull request at the end of the Entry Period. Changes made after that are not considered. We may use automated and AI tools to help review entries, but the judges make all decisions.

7. PRIZES

7.1 In each category, we will award the following 3 prizes, provided there are enough eligible entries. In total, we will award up to 30 prizes. The approximate retail value of each prize, based on US retail prices, is shown in the table below:

7.2 Each app can win only 1 prize and can be entered in only 1 category. You may win several prizes, including in the same category, with different apps: we judge the apps, not their authors.

7.3 We will send you a link to a draft order for your prize on https://busy.app/, in which the items and shipping cost $0. You enter your full name, phone number, email address, and shipping address or delivery method and place the order. The order is governed by the BUSY Bar Terms of Sale, including the Limited Warranty, except that we pay for shipping, customs duties, and import taxes. If these Rules conflict with the Terms of Sale, these Rules apply to your prize order. If you have any problems with your order, contact support@busy.app.

7.4 If we cannot deliver your prize because of an incorrect or incomplete address you entered, or because you do not accept the delivery, and you do not fix this within 14 days after we tell you, you lose the prize.

7.5 You are responsible for any income or other taxes on your prize under the laws of your country. If you are a US resident and the prizes you win from us in a calendar year are worth $600 or more, you must give us a completed IRS Form W-9 before we award the prize, and we will report the prize value to the IRS.

7.6 Prizes cannot be transferred, exchanged for cash, or substituted, except that we may substitute a prize of equal or greater value if a listed prize becomes unavailable.

8. PROMO CODES AND SOCIAL MEDIA POSTS

8.1 For each of your apps that is approved and published in the Catalog by December 10, 2026, but does not win a prize, you will receive a personal promo code for 1 BUSY Bar on https://busy.app/, even if another of your apps wins a prize. The discount is 15%, or 25% if you publish a post about that app as described in Section 8.2. Each promo code:

• (a) applies to 1 BUSY Bar in a single order;
• (b) is valid until March 11, 2027;
• (c) cannot be transferred, exchanged for cash, or combined with other promo codes; and
• (d) applies to orders from https://busy.app/ shipped to countries where we deliver, under the Terms of Sale.

8.2 To get the 25% discount, by December 7, 2026, publish a public post about your app on your personal social media account, for example a photo, video, or screen recording, and add the link to your post in a comment to your pull request or in the Hackathon thread on our Discord server at https://discord.gg/9B8M3bwy6t. The post must include a link to https://busy.app/ and the hashtags #BUSYBarContest and #ad. Posts on Facebook do not count.

8.3 Your post must stay public until December 15, 2026. If your post is missing, private, or deleted before then, you will receive the 15% promo code instead.

9. WINNERS

9.1 We will announce the winners on December 11, 2026, on our Discord. Between December 11 and 15, 2026, we will contact winners and the authors of all apps included in the Catalog on GitHub, in their pull requests, and on Discord, in the Hackathon thread. To claim your prize, you must reply within 7 days and place your prize order within 14 days after we send you the order link. If you do not, or if you are not eligible, you lose the prize and we may award it to the next-ranked entry. We are not required to look for more than 2 alternate winners for any prize.

10. YOUR APP AND PUBLICITY

10.1 You keep all rights in your app. Your app stays under its open-source license as required by the Terms for Authors, and we do not acquire ownership of it.

10.2 Except where prohibited by law, by entering, you grant Flipper Devices, Inc. and its affiliates, including Flipper FZCO, a non-exclusive, worldwide, royalty-free, perpetual, irrevocable, transferable, and sublicensable license to use, reproduce, edit, modify, adapt, distribute, publicly display, and perform your app and the materials of your entry, such as its description, demos, and screenshots, in whole or in part, in any medium and in any language, to evaluate entries, run the Hackathon, operate the Catalog under the Terms for Authors, and for any marketing or promotional purposes, without further notice, approval, or payment. This license applies to the extent of your rights in the app and in addition to its open-source license. We will credit you as the author where reasonably practicable.

10.3 Except where prohibited by law, you also grant the same license for your name, GitHub username, voice, and image as they appear in your entry or social media post, and for your social media post (including linking to or reposting it), for the purposes listed in Section 10.2, during and after the Hackathon. If the law of your country allows you to withdraw this permission, you may do so by contacting us as described in Section 12.9. This does not affect materials published before your request.

10.4 To the extent permitted by law, you waive, and agree not to assert against us, our affiliates, or anyone acting on our behalf, any moral rights in your entry, such as the rights of attribution and integrity, in connection with the uses described in Section 10.2. If this waiver is not valid under the law of your country, the rest of these Rules remains in effect.

10.5 Entries are not confidential. We and others may independently develop apps or features similar to your entry, and we have no obligation to you because of this. We are not required to feature or promote any entry.

11. YOUR PERSONAL DATA

11.1 Flipper Devices, Inc. is responsible for your personal data in the Hackathon (the controller). Flipper FZCO remains responsible for your data in the Catalog under the Terms for Authors.

• (a) What: your GitHub username and public profile, your pull request and app, your social media post and the link to it (if you publish one), your name, voice, and image if they appear in your entry or post, your Discord username if you use Discord, any information you give us to confirm your eligibility, and, for winners, the data you enter in your prize order (your full name, phone number, email address, and shipping address or delivery method), your IRS Form W-9 (US winners, if required), and your parent’s or guardian’s consent (winners under 18). We receive some of this data from your public GitHub profile and your social media post.
• (b) Why and on what legal basis: to run and judge the Hackathon, check your eligibility (including against sanctions lists), show entries, announce the results, and award prizes and promo codes, under these Rules (Art. 6(1)(b) GDPR); to meet tax obligations (Art. 6(1)(c) GDPR); and to use entries, names, and posts to promote the Hackathon and BUSY products, keep records of the Hackathon, and protect against fraud (Art. 6(1)(f) GDPR). We do not make decisions about you based solely on automated processing. If a winner does not give us the data needed to deliver the prize, a required tax form, or a parent’s or guardian’s consent, we cannot award the prize.
• (c) Who receives it: the judges; providers of automated and AI review tools and our e-commerce and shipping providers for prize orders, all listed in Annex 3 to our Privacy Policy; and tax authorities where required. GitHub, Discord, and social media platforms process your data under their own terms. Your data may be processed in the United States. For transfers from the EEA or the UK, we rely on the European Commission’s Standard Contractual Clauses, supplemented by the UK International Data Transfer Addendum where applicable.
• (d) How long: we keep Hackathon records for 2 years after the results are announced, and prize orders and tax records for as long as tax and accounting laws require.
• (e) Your rights: you can object to processing based on our legitimate interests. For your other rights, see our Privacy Policy.

12. GENERAL

12.1 We may disqualify any entry or entrant that breaks these Rules or the Terms for Authors, uses fake or misleading posts, submits template or copied apps with no meaningful changes, or tries to manipulate the Hackathon. We may do so even after we have announced the entrant as a winner and, if the prize has already been delivered, ask for it to be returned.

12.2 We may ask any entrant or winner to confirm their identity, age, country of residence, or authorship of the entry. If you do not provide this within 7 days or the information shows that you are not eligible, we may disqualify your entry.

12.3 We may change, suspend, or cancel the Hackathon only if fraud, technical problems, or other circumstances beyond our control prevent it from running as planned. We will announce any change in the same way as these Rules. We will not reduce the prizes listed in Section 7 for entries already judged.

12.4 If, because of an error, more prizes are claimed than we offer, or a prize is awarded to someone who is not eligible, we will award the prizes only to eligible winners according to these Rules.

12.5 To the extent permitted by law, we are not responsible for technical failures, lost or late entries, or problems with GitHub, Discord, or social media platforms. You also agree, to the extent permitted by law, to compensate us for third-party claims arising from your entry or your post, such as claims that they infringe someone’s rights. You release GitHub, Discord, Meta, and other social media platforms from any liability in connection with the Hackathon. Nothing in these Rules limits rights you have under mandatory consumer protection law.

12.6 Entering the Hackathon or winning a prize does not create any employment, partnership, or agency relationship between you and us.

12.7 These Rules govern the Hackathon. The Terms for Authors govern your app in the Catalog, and the Terms of Sale govern your prize order, except as stated in Section 7.3. If any part of these Rules is invalid, the rest remains in effect. If we do not enforce any part of these Rules, we may still enforce it later.

12.8 These Rules are governed by the laws of the State of New York. If you are a consumer in the EU, the UK, Canada, or Australia, this choice of law does not deprive you of the protection of the mandatory laws of your country of residence.

12.9 For questions about the Hackathon, email support@busy.app or contact us on Discord at https://discord.com/users/458214150489899026.