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It seems like a precarious position to be in, supporting a service that helps users walk away from a competitor. Not to say that you shouldn't – I just wouldn'

It seems like a precarious position to be in, supporting a service that helps users walk away from a competitor. Not to say that you shouldn't – I just wouldn't expect flickr to stand idle while it's done. This is particularly true if it's being done via the flickr api – beyond the API being explicitly for non-commercial development (without other arrangements), the number 1 item on the "you shall not" list is: Use Flickr APIs for any application that replicates or attempts to replace the essential user experience of Flickr.com. (source: http://www.flickr.com/services/api/tos/ http://www.flickr.com/services/api/tos/ ) Just say'n...

jmathai 14y ago
Valid points. To apply for a commercial license one of the criteria is that you have to represent a major brand. Not sure why but if you don't say yes to that, you end up with a non-commercial license. Using the Flickr API to "recreate" the experience is a bit vague. Probably intentionally. But it's unclear if it means to build a Flickr-like interface on top of their API or exporting your photos and then re-uploading them somewhere else. Additionally, we're helping users move their photos into their own storage accounts. Which is a bit different than moving them onto ours. We do offer a layer of functionality on top of their storage account so I can see how there might be some concern. Nonetheless, we're respecting their rate limits and even have libraries on Github[1] if you wanted to do it yourself. [1] https://github.com/openphoto/export-flickr https://github.com/openphoto/export-flickr
jlarocco 14y ago
I think you're misreading the TOS. That part of the TOS prohibits creating a photo sharing site that uses Flickr as its backend. The OpenPhoto site doesn't give much detail, but this tool is (apparently) just downloading the photos to DropBox and importing them into OpenPhoto. Since the actual OpenPhoto code doesn't have anything to do with Flickr, it's not violating the TOS. There are similar "import from Flickr" tools for almost every photo sharing service there is, and I've never heard of any of them getting their Flickr API key revoked.
- jmathai 14y ago
  Unless they go over the rate limits :)

jmathai 14y ago

Valid points. To apply for a commercial license one of the criteria is that you have to represent a major brand. Not sure why but if you don't say yes to that, you end up with a non-commercial license. Using the Flickr API to "recreate" the experience is a bit vague. Probably intentionally. But it's unclear if it means to build a Flickr-like interface on top of their API or exporting your photos and then re-uploading them somewhere else. Additionally, we're helping users move their photos into their own storage accounts. Which is a bit different than moving them onto ours. We do offer a layer of functionality on top of their storage account so I can see how there might be some concern. Nonetheless, we're respecting their rate limits and even have libraries on Github[1] if you wanted to do it yourself. [1] https://github.com/openphoto/export-flickr https://github.com/openphoto/export-flickr

jlarocco 14y ago

I think you're misreading the TOS. That part of the TOS prohibits creating a photo sharing site that uses Flickr as its backend. The OpenPhoto site doesn't give much detail, but this tool is (apparently) just downloading the photos to DropBox and importing them into OpenPhoto. Since the actual OpenPhoto code doesn't have anything to do with Flickr, it's not violating the TOS. There are similar "import from Flickr" tools for almost every photo sharing service there is, and I've never heard of any of them getting their Flickr API key revoked.

jmathai 14y ago
Unless they go over the rate limits :)