mugsy-mcgeee
commented
9 years ago So what your saying is you would like to use the library we wrote without attribution?
On Jan 18, 2015, at 2:35 AM, Andrew Toulouse notifications@github.com wrote:
long post but the gist is that this clause should be removed. At best it's worthless. At worst, it has negative value to contributors.
- Redistributions of any form whatsoever must retain the following acknowledgment: 'This product includes software developed by skadistats (http://www.skadistats.com/).' Web applications and properties built using the clarity library must additionally include a visible, legible hypertext link with text "Powered by skadistats" linking to the URL http://www.skadistats.com on every page containing data obtained by using this library. Removal of this attribution shall be granted immediately (within one business day) if requested by skadistats or its authorized agents.
This clause is incredibly questionable and appears to have been written with no real understanding of either copyright or law. For one thing, it means that the software is not in actuality open-source, because you're implicitly claiming some form of copyright/sublicensing of data. Which is nonsense. That data came from Valve and if you really wanted to fight it you'd probably get slammed for violating the Steam Subscriber Agreement anyways.
"Web applications" isn't defined. "Properties" isn't defined. "Pages" isn't defined. "Skadistats" isn't defined. Is Skadistats incorporated? It surely isn't, because it's never referred to by a legal company name. And who's actually authorized to make those requests? If someone fakes being a partner of skadistats and requests a site that uses the library to remove the attribution within one day, that site is required to remove it if they don't hear back, except they're not penalized either way by either attributing or not attributing skadistats. But if they were, this clause would fuck them over the instant some phisher decided to screw with them.
And what about providing the software as-is? That stuff is standard, but if you disclaim liability for that then how can the clause that implies (but doesn't say anything further) that skadistats can make a request to users of the library even be enforceable without skadistats actually being liable? Doesn't that make the clause an actual risk to skadistats?
Also, there's an obvious workaround that would allow a site to use clarity with exactly zero attribution whatsoever, assuming they're willing to argue that you have no right to sublicense Valve's copyrighted data anyways, which you don't, which the attribution requirement basically says. That is, that's what someone might do if the penalties weren't completely toothless anyways. And if they weren't, normal users of it would be vulnerable to and exploitable by griefers anyhow.
tl;dr: Penalties: toothless. Protections to you: zero or possibly negative (risky). Open-source: hardly.
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toulouse
onethirtyfive
spheenik
long post but the gist is that this clause should be removed. At best it's worthless. At worst, it has negative value to contributors.
This clause is incredibly questionable and appears to have been written with no real understanding of either copyright or law. For one thing, it means that the software is not in actuality open-source, because you're implicitly claiming some form of copyright/sublicensing of data. Which is nonsense. That data came from Valve and if you really wanted to fight it you'd probably get slammed for violating the Steam Subscriber Agreement anyways.
"Web applications" isn't defined. "Properties" isn't defined. "Pages" isn't defined. "Skadistats" isn't defined. Is Skadistats incorporated? It surely isn't, because it's never referred to by a legal company name. And who's actually authorized to make those requests? If someone fakes being a partner of skadistats and requests a site that uses the library to remove the attribution within one day, that site is required to remove it if they don't hear back, except they're not penalized either way by either attributing or not attributing skadistats. But if they were, this clause would fuck them over the instant some phisher decided to screw with them.
And what about providing the software as-is? That stuff is standard, but if you disclaim liability for that then how can the clause that implies (but doesn't say anything further) that skadistats can make a request to users of the library even be enforceable without skadistats actually being liable? Doesn't that make the clause an actual risk to skadistats?
Also, there's an obvious workaround that would allow a site to use clarity with exactly zero attribution whatsoever, assuming they're willing to argue that you have no right to sublicense Valve's copyrighted data anyways, which you don't, which the attribution requirement basically says. That is, that's what someone might do if the penalties weren't completely toothless anyways. And if they weren't, normal users of it would be vulnerable to and exploitable by griefers anyhow.
tl;dr: Penalties: toothless. Protections to you: zero or possibly negative (risky). Open-source: hardly.