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OwnCloud Infinite Scale added EULA that prohibits commercial use [pdf]
- cvccvroomvroom 3y agoPseudo FOSS with giant strings hostile to users' freedom. They should just go closed source and force binding arbitration.
- Y_Y 3y ago> "By installing, copying or otherwise using ... you agree to be bound by ... " Why do people keep writing shit like this. Whoever wrote that EULA no doubt has an understanding of contract law and knows that you can't just unilaterally bind someone into an agreement like that. I know it's classic EULA nonsense, but it still bugs me how you can just write whatever and hope people naively take your word on it.
- delusional 3y agoIt should be disbarrable to knowingly write unenforceable EULA's.
- meghan_rain 3y agoThe you will surely agree to be permanently barred from looking at, commenting, writing or otherwise contributing to code if you write a bug I deem severe enough?
- v3d2 3y agoI wasn't aware you needed a license to code.
- kaliqt 3y agoWith the way peasa- I mean citizens talk these days, they'd say breathing should require a license.
- beepbooptheory 3y agoIs this like a feudalism joke? I don't get it.
- dooglius 3y agoSeems reasonable to bar someone from contributing code to a project who _knowingly_ contributes severely buggy code
- DannyBee 3y agoThis one is likely enforceable.
- imtringued 3y agoThere is a difference between individual clauses being invalidated and the whole contract being invalidated.
- Zephyo_ 3y agoI am very uneducated on this subject, what exactly is the problem with that sentence?
- gmerc 3y agoWhat OP says, it’s not enforceable. that’s not how contracts work despite longstanding attempts to make people believe so
- DannyBee 3y agoOP is wrong. This would be a enforceable in the US, despite lots of HN not wanting it to be, and badly playing lawyer. Unilateral form contracts are enforced all the time.
- alphager 3y agoA contract requires mutual assent. Hiding an EULA.txt file somewhere does not fulfill the assent requirement. You are already copying nextcloud when you download it; you can't be bound to arbitrary demands you never heard of for that.
- DannyBee 3y agoUnilateral form contracts are a thing. Clickwrap is generally enforceable. Browserwrap generally is not.
- t0mas88 3y agoApparently the code is Apache licensed, so you can use that code. Putting a file somewhere that states "you agree to X by using the software" without you signing anything isn't an enforceable contract. If they want you to agree to something it needs to be (e-)signed. Not just stating an action and claiming that by doing that you agree to a contract.
- DannyBee 3y agoActually, this is totally wrong, at least in the US. They can't bind you for doing nothing (opening a package for example). They can bind you if you get the benefit of the bargain, which you would by using the software.
- matheusmoreira 3y agoCould have been worse. It could have been "by reading this license, you agree to its terms" which is essentially what website EULAs do.
- deng 3y agoUnfortunately, it is not that easy. First off, "contract law", apart from being incredibly complex, is also different depending on where you are located. Even within the US, we have seen different rulings on whether EULAs are enforceable or not. It often depends on how these EULAs are presented to the user and how exactly they are worded. Here in Germany, I'm pretty sure that the above would not be enforceable, but the real reason these EULAs are written is usually not that they hold up in court. From my experience, having an EULA like this will make pretty sure that no company with a legal department will touch this thing with a 10foot pole, so in effect, EULAs actually do work (unfortunately).
- Semaphor 3y ago> Here in Germany I agree, because of AGB-law, though that depends on some stuff, the usual EULA-void rules were because you had to buy the software before agreeing to the EULA instead of the other way around. Not sure what would happen here. But IIRC that is generally not relevant for contracts between companies, only between consumers and companies. Not quite sure about that part, though.
- imtringued 3y agohttps://www.gesetze-im-internet.de/bgb/__310.html https://www.gesetze-im-internet.de/bgb/__310.html >(1) § 305 Absatz 2 und 3, § 308 Nummer 1, 2 bis 9 und § 309 finden keine Anwendung auf Allgemeine Geschäftsbedingungen, die gegenüber einem Unternehmer, einer juristischen Person des öffentlichen Rechts oder einem öffentlich-rechtlichen Sondervermögen verwendet werden. § 308 and § 309 are "catalogues" of various conditions that nullify an AGB clause. Also, contract clauses in individual contracts can still be considered as part of the AGB even if the company gives you a separate AGB document.
- jxdxbx 3y agoA “license” is legal permission to do something that would otherwise be illegal, such as copy software (assuming there’s no fair use etc), or even attend a concert. Licenses are often granted as part of contracts, but need not be. Unilateral license conditions are not binding contacts, but not following them can still be unlawful. If a movie theater breaks a license term by for example playing a movie publicly without authorization, it violates copyright, not contact law. Probably both in real life.
- chaosite 3y agoUnless that movie theater entered into a contract with a distributor, right?
- jxdxbx 3y agoIn real situations yes. But in the software world “license” and “contract” are often used interchangeably, contracts that grant license will be called “licenses,” etc. So it leads to confusion.
- paulnpace 3y agoThis is a license agreement, so who are the parties coming to agreement?
- eli 3y agoIf you're not a party to the agreement then isn't possessing the software a copyright violation?
- josephcsible 3y agoIf I buy a used computer, do I have to agree to the terms of every publisher with software on it to not break copyright law?
- ndsipa_pomu 3y ago
- tssva 3y agoThe blanket statement that EULAs are unenforceable is not accurate. EULAs are enforceable in some jurisdictions. They are where I live.
- tptacek 3y agoA lawyer downthread says you're wrong about this. Are you also a lawyer? Or are they wrong?
- ndsipa_pomu 3y agoAre they trying to push people towards NextCloud instead? I've been running an OwnCloud instance at work for some years and more recently a NextCloud instance at home. I was thinking that NextCloud was going to be the eventual upgrade path away from OwnCloud, but with their "Infinite Scale" reworking of it, I thought that maybe they were looking to take the lead again. I don't know if our usage is considered "commercial" as we're self-hosting it and not re-selling usage of it, but it could be simpler to just migrate if they ever choose to get litigious about it.
- andybak 3y agoI think their intention is to forbid "selling it as a paid service" but I agree - the merest whiff of legal uncertainty is enough for most companies just to give it a wide berth. At least AGPL etc are well understood. But bespoke licences - if I need to call a $500/hr lawyer to check if i can use your software then I'll probably just skip it.
- ndsipa_pomu 3y ago> I think their intention is to forbid "selling it as a paid service" That's my interpretation too. It puzzles me as surely companies providing it as a professional service would be far more likely to pay for support for the software.
- tpxl 3y ago> At least AGPL etc are well understood Is AGPL well understood? I thought people were still arguing whether you have to open source your whole company if you dare change a single line of AGPL code.
- kanwisher 3y agoNo only open source any modifications to the AGPL code
- Avamander 3y ago> I thought people were still arguing whether you have to open source your whole company if you dare change a single line of AGPL code. Part of that argument is just a few companies' fear of contributing anything back, not that the license is so wide.
- VoxPelli 3y agoThe code is Apache 2.0 licensed though? Can they really add a limitation like this?
- andybak 3y agoAlmost certainly not. At the very least they now have two licences that contradict each other which would make it rather tricky for them to claim infringement. (IANL)
- joshuaissac 3y agoYes, the code is still licensed under Apache 2.0. Only the QA'd binary builds are affected by the EULA, according to https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36664203 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=36664203
- q3k 3y agoThis seems to only be about binary builds / 'stable releases'? https://github.com/owncloud/ocis#end-user-license-agreement https://github.com/owncloud/ocis#end-user-license-agreement https://github.com/owncloud/ocis/issues/6570 https://github.com/owncloud/ocis/issues/6570 https://github.com/owncloud/ocis/pull/6755/files https://github.com/owncloud/ocis/pull/6755/files
- sneak 3y agoSo, no longer open source? Do they own copyright to all of the code that allows them to relicense it like that?
- Canada 3y agoThey have required contributors to actually sign a CLA since the beginning, so yeah, they do own the copyright.
- sneak 3y agoThis is the main reason I will never donate code to an organization that requires a CLA: it allows them to repurpose your contributions to promote and distribute proprietary software, which is, IMO, the ultimate in ingratitude. Most orgs that require a CLA are just doing open source cosplay, they don't actually give a fuck about software freedoms. Maybe someone should harvest all the contributor emails out of the OwnCloud git history and send them a note so that they know what happened as a result of signing their copyrights away.
- hoistbypetard 3y agoAccording to the README[1] on their source repository, that is, flatly, untrue. They say: > We are very happy that oCIS does not require a Contributor License Agreement (CLA) as it is Apache 2.0 licensed. We hope this will make it easier to contribute code. If you want to get in touch, most of the developers hang out in our rocket chat channel or reach out to the ownCloud central forum. They also say: > Some builds of stable ownCloud Infinite Scale releases provided by ownCloud GmbH are subject to an End User License Agreement. Which seems both reasonable and sensible... [1](https://github.com/owncloud/ocis/tree/master https://github.com/owncloud/ocis/tree/master)
- Canada 3y agooh, well I stand corrected then. I contributed to ownCloud many years ago and at that time CLAs were required.
- blackout91 3y ago
- IceWreck 3y agohttps://github.com/owncloud/ocis/pull/6755 https://github.com/owncloud/ocis/pull/6755 - its only for published binary builds.
- jasonjayr 3y ago> Commercial Use means corporate use intended for commercial advantage, monetary compensation or profit-making, including but not limited to e.g. offering ownCloud Infinite Scale based software-as-a-service (SaaS), platform-as-a-service (PaaS) or any other types of hosted services to a third party. Whereas scenarios in which such a commercial advantage is intended to be realized indirectly by leveraging ownCloud Infinite Scale, e.g. as a cost-free add-on or as an embedded value-add proposition for supporting monetarization of other products or services or the like constellations, is also considered as Commercial. Whereas, Private Use and Productive Use are explicitly NOT considered as Commercial. > Productive Use means the use of ownCloud Infinite Scale by an Organization in its productive day to day business or for testing, evaluation or development purposes and solely within the specifications and use-cases for which it was designed and released by licensor. If my reading of this is right -- this basically boils down to "You cannot host this for commercial use for someone else. You may self-host this in a commercial setting for your own business" -- basically an Anti-AWS clause to protect against the ElasticSearch/OpenSearch thing.
- KronisLV 3y ago> basically an Anti-AWS clause to protect against the ElasticSearch/OpenSearch thing. I wonder what the best license would be for the projects that want something like this? I mean SSPL got a lot of flak. Something like BSL was regarded more positively, but also was meant for a slightly different use case.
- gtirloni 3y ago> I wonder what the best license would be for the projects that want something like this? A traditional license for proprietary code would fit well.
- SamuelAdams 3y agoFor a while I thought it was AGPL, but after reading it it looks like there are no provisions against using the code for commercial purposes, only that if source code is used, the modified source code must also be made available to the public.
- dragooc 3y agoWith this PR https://github.com/owncloud/ocis/pull/6755 https://github.com/owncloud/ocis/pull/6755 I tried to make the policy a bit more clear after we got a nice issue report about it. To be clear: only binary builds of stable versions of Infinite Scale that the ownCloud company is shipping are protected by the EULA. The source code license is Apache2 or AGPL for some parts, and is not touched by this of course. The EULA even allows free use widely, including private, non-commercial and in commercial contexts. It does not allow hosting. We hope to provide a clear and understandable regulation for the project with this, that is protecting our efforts to a certain degree.
- pdoub 3y ago`It does not allow hosting.` as in "you are not allowed to provide others with oCIS instances and ask them to pay for it"?
- dragooc 3y agoright, this is not allowed by the EULA of the binaries released by ownCloud GmbH.
- plagiarist 3y agoAm I reading correctly that building from source would still allow for commercial hosting contexts (subject to AGPL)? If that is the case, I don't understand how the EULA benefits anyone enough to want it.
- dragooc 3y agoThe source is available under free licenses, so you can build and do with it what these licenses allow, which is basically anything. Most serious companies however appreciate a proper business relationship with defined, vendor supplied builds, that they can plan with etc. Remember that somebody who builds from source can not call us asking for reactions of any kind. That is were the EULA comes to value.
- 3y ago
- hoistbypetard 3y agoThe source code is still apache2 licensed, according to the README[1]. That says > Some builds of stable ownCloud Infinite Scale releases provided by ownCloud GmbH are subject to an End User License Agreement. That seems to be exactly the kind of thing that the apache2 license permits. [1](https://github.com/owncloud/ocis/tree/master https://github.com/owncloud/ocis/tree/master) It also only seems sensible... if you're offering something like OwnCloud as SaaS, you should probably know enough about it to do your own builds from source.
- paulnpace 3y agoIs it binding if I don't have a tool to read .pdf, as .pdf is not required to use the software (or to download from GitHub)?
- justinclift 3y agoIsn't that a strange way to do things, as it's not a licence? That EULA document is for end users, so has no bearing upon non-end-users of the software. For example, developers. So, developers should be able to fork the repo, change that EULA file to something else (or even just remove it), then do what they want with it.
- api 3y agoHeaven forbid businesses pay for open source software. Paying for closed-in-every-way SaaS is fine though.