Erlang forums (was Re: PING TEST)

Contact | Erlang Forums contact@REDACTED
Fri Dec 17 02:40:25 CET 2021


> The problem with the Erlang Forum ToS is not at all the content, which is standard.  The problem is that they claim the terms are legally binding, and yet there is no indication who or what is the legal entity behind Erlang Forums.  
> 
> The domain name is registered anonymously in Iceland.  
> 
> Is Ericsson the legal entity that owns erlangforums.com?  If not, who is?
> 

Ivan, you might have missed it but it was mentioned in the original announcements (as well as in Kenneth's recent post) that he/the Erlang/OTP team approached Aston of the Elixir Forum (me) to set up and run this forum (which of course I do in close cooperation with the Erlang team).

Terms are generally binding from the moment you start using a site and ours merely reflect the implicit permissions you grant the forum and our users when you register on the site, submit a contribution to it, and continue submitting contributions to it - because you are making the conscious decision to do so freely and willingly. They aren't strictly necessary because there’s nothing in them that isn’t reflected by user behaviour or what would be reasonable or expected on such a platform and that is what would usually form the basis of any legal examination or interpretation, however, on sites like this they can be useful for the avoidance of doubt. You don't need the name and address of a site operator to be bound by its terms so long as those terms don't require you to do anything where you would traditionally need a properly signed contract containing those details (such as when transferring copyright/ownership of intellectual property - which of course is not something we ask) or where the site is operated by an entity such as a large LTD/PLC where there may be a legal requirement for those details to be disclosed (which again, is not the case here).

> The domain name is registered anonymously in Iceland.  

This is just the standard Whois protect service which many domain registrars offer free of charge (to help prevent spam etc)

Ultimately, you have to decide for yourself whether you are happy with the terms, how the forum is set up, managed etc. Obviously the Erlang team and those already taking part are, but you have to make that decision for yourself. Personally I hope you'll give us a try... particularly as a fellow Welshy :p


> On 16 Dec 2021, at 23:16, Ivan Uemlianin <ivan@REDACTED> wrote:
> 
> The problem with the Erlang Forum ToS is not at all the content, which is standard.  The problem is that they claim the terms are     legally binding, and yet there is no indication who or what is the legal entity behind Erlang Forums.  
> 
> The domain name is registered anonymously in Iceland.  
> 
> Is Ericsson the legal entity that owns erlangforums.com?  If not, who is?
> 
> Ivan
> 
> 
> On 16/12/2021 16:27, Fred Hebert wrote:
>> 
>> On Wed, Dec 15, 2021 at 12:53 PM Scott Ribe <scott_ribe@REDACTED <mailto:scott_ribe@REDACTED>> wrote:
>> > On Dec 15, 2021, at 10:27 AM, Contact | Erlang Forums <contact@REDACTED <mailto:contact@REDACTED>> wrote:
>> > 
>> > This is not the case. Code use is based on context and intent. So if somebody posts a code snippet in a thread where someone is asking a question about how to do something, they are, by contributing to the thread, implicitly stating that that person (or anyone reading the thread in future) may use that code in the context of the thread that they posted their snippet in (otherwise they wouldn't have contributed to it).
>> 
>> While I imagine this is the INTENT, the ToS restrictions go well beyond:
>> 
>> "You may not adapt, alter or create a derivative work from any erlangforums.com <http://erlangforums.com/> content except for your own personal, non-commercial use."
>> 
>> "You may not copy, reproduce, republish, post, broadcast, download, transmit, make available to the public, or otherwise use erlangforums.com <http://erlangforums.com/> content in any way except for your own personal, non-commercial use."
>> 
>> Restrictions on republishing, posting, broadcasting are understandable. But we may not download nor "otherwise use"? Really???
>> 
>> 
>> 
>> Unfortunately, most of these clauses are generally correct even in the context of a mailing list. Copyright applies implicitly without needs to declare it at all, and the clauses of "not creating derivative use except for personal use" are active for any code you find online, get sent by email, and so on, unless noted otherwise by a license. If someone shows you code in a thread where asking for help but that code is not licensed, there is actually no legal permission to use any of that code in any sort of commercial systems nor for redistribution.
>> 
>> Code and even quoting people requires explicit legal permission to be reusable in most jurisdictions, and any use you have made of such contributions could have been considered by the original author to have been intended for education purposes, and reusing them may be a legal liability (which your lawyer -- which I am not -- should inform you about). I have written books where even quoting someone from a public mailing list was a big no-no without written permission, and if I wanted to cite Joe Armstrong after his death, I'd have had to ask for written permission from his estate in order to publish. Contexts in terms of academic reviews or literary criticism tends to offer more freedom, but none of this is guaranteed.
>> 
>> Particularly, bits like:
>> 
>> Where you are invited to submit any contribution to erlangforums.com <http://erlangforums.com/> (including any photographs, text, graphics, audio or video) you agree, by submitting your contribution, to grant Erlang Forums a perpetual, non-exclusive, royalty-free, sub-licenseable right and license to use, modify, reproduce, publish, translate, distribute, make available to the public. By submitting your contribution to erlangforums.com <http://erlangforums.com/>, you: ...
>> 
>> tend to lean on "non-exclusive, royalty-free, sub-licenseable right and license" as legal jargon to say "you allow the erlang forum to republish your stuff" (because otherwise they can't display it to other users whether logged or not). The fact that a license is non-exclusive means that you are free to keep another license for other uses, but implies that you also had a license in the first place where it was legitimate to share that code and grant that right. Eg. you can't share code your employer owns and isn't open source and legally grand rights to it.
>> 
>> These are standard and would usually have been required or implied by the erlang-questions mailing list archive. That Ericsson didn't explicitly set them up is up to their lawyers; but there were, for example, a google groups mirror of the list, which are posted under the following general terms: https://policies.google.com/terms <https://policies.google.com/terms> , specifically the section "Permission to use content" which similarly contains a "non-exclusive, worldwide, royalty-free" license to anything that gets posted there.
>> 
>> As such, if you look into the way the groups are mirrored for the mailing list, anything posted there may already more or less abide by similar-sounding licensing terms and there isn't much that's new under the sun. In fact, the erlangforums terms may even be narrower than Google's terms, which also include permissions to data-mine and translate whatever is posted to their systems.
>> 
>> Also let me add a mandatory "I am not a lawyer, this is not legal advice" disclaimer here; I am speaking of my experience having had to deal with copyright before in various functions as an author and someone having had to deal with lawyers in corporate settings around open source, but have no such qualifications myself.
>>  
> 
> -- 
> ============================================================
> Ivan A. Uemlianin PhD
> Llaisdy
> 
> Ymchwil a Datblygu Technoleg Lleferydd
> Speech Technology Research and Development
> 
>                     ivan@REDACTED <mailto:ivan@REDACTED>
>                         @llaisdy
>                          llaisdy.wordpress.com
>               github.com/llaisdy
>                      www.linkedin.com/in/ivanuemlianin <http://www.linkedin.com/in/ivanuemlianin>
> 
>                         festina lente
> ============================================================

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