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Aston<br>
<br>
The site needs to say clearly what legal entity owns and runs it. <br>
<br>
The content of the ToS is not interesting to me.<br>
<br>
Diolch<br>
<br>
Ivan<br>
<br>
<br>
<div class="moz-cite-prefix">On 17/12/2021 01:40, Contact | Erlang
Forums wrote:<br>
</div>
<blockquote type="cite"
cite="mid:13008093-FC43-4EE6-81B4-25CCD862C1FB@erlangforums.com">
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html; charset=UTF-8">
<blockquote type="cite" class="">
<div class="">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. </div>
</blockquote>
<div class="">
<blockquote type="cite" class="">
<div class=""><br class="">
The domain name is registered anonymously in Iceland. <br
class="">
<br class="">
Is Ericsson the legal entity that owns <a
href="http://erlangforums.com" class=""
moz-do-not-send="true">erlangforums.com</a>? If not, who
is?<br class="">
<br class="">
</div>
</blockquote>
<div class=""><br class="">
</div>
<div class="">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).</div>
<div class=""><br class="">
</div>
<div class="">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).</div>
<div class=""><br class="">
</div>
<div class="">
<blockquote type="cite" class="">
<div class="">The domain name is registered anonymously in
Iceland. </div>
</blockquote>
<br class="">
</div>
<div class="">This is just the standard Whois protect service
which many domain registrars offer free of charge (to help
prevent spam etc)</div>
<div class=""><br class="">
</div>
<div class="">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</div>
<div class=""><br class="">
</div>
<div class="">
<div class="">
<div><br class="">
<blockquote type="cite" class="">
<div class="">On 16 Dec 2021, at 23:16, Ivan Uemlianin
<<a href="mailto:ivan@llaisdy.com"
class="moz-txt-link-freetext" moz-do-not-send="true">ivan@llaisdy.com</a>>
wrote:</div>
<br class="Apple-interchange-newline">
<div class="">
<meta http-equiv="Content-Type" content="text/html;
charset=UTF-8" class="">
<div class=""> 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. <br
class="">
<br class="">
The domain name is registered anonymously in
Iceland. <br class="">
<br class="">
Is Ericsson the legal entity that owns <a
href="http://erlangforums.com" class=""
moz-do-not-send="true">erlangforums.com</a>? If
not, who is?<br class="">
<br class="">
Ivan<br class="">
<br class="">
<br class="">
<div class="moz-cite-prefix">On 16/12/2021 16:27,
Fred Hebert wrote:<br class="">
</div>
<blockquote type="cite"
cite="mid:CAFA3VZK1bnMX6E=uWuk8CbKdb17fOr1AGYr-d+OOj4xV+pmOBQ@mail.gmail.com"
class="">
<meta http-equiv="content-type"
content="text/html; charset=UTF-8" class="">
<div dir="ltr" class=""><br class="">
<div class="gmail_quote">
<div dir="ltr" class="gmail_attr">On Wed, Dec
15, 2021 at 12:53 PM Scott Ribe <<a
href="mailto:scott_ribe@elevated-dev.com"
moz-do-not-send="true"
class="moz-txt-link-freetext">scott_ribe@elevated-dev.com</a>>
wrote:<br class="">
</div>
<blockquote class="gmail_quote"
style="margin:0px 0px 0px
0.8ex;border-left:1px solid
rgb(204,204,204);padding-left:1ex">> On
Dec 15, 2021, at 10:27 AM, Contact | Erlang
Forums <<a
href="mailto:contact@erlangforums.com"
target="_blank" moz-do-not-send="true"
class="moz-txt-link-freetext">contact@erlangforums.com</a>>
wrote:<br class="">
> <br class="">
> 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).<br
class="">
<br class="">
While I imagine this is the INTENT, the ToS
restrictions go well beyond:<br class="">
<br class="">
"You may not adapt, alter or create a
derivative work from any <a
href="http://erlangforums.com/"
rel="noreferrer" target="_blank"
moz-do-not-send="true" class="">erlangforums.com</a>
content except for your own personal,
non-commercial use."<br class="">
<br class="">
"You may not copy, reproduce, republish,
post, broadcast, download, transmit, make
available to the public, or otherwise use <a
href="http://erlangforums.com/"
rel="noreferrer" target="_blank"
moz-do-not-send="true" class="">erlangforums.com</a>
content in any way except for your own
personal, non-commercial use."<br class="">
<br class="">
Restrictions on republishing, posting,
broadcasting are understandable. But we may
not download nor "otherwise use"? Really???<br
class="">
<br class="">
<br class="">
</blockquote>
<div class=""><br class="">
</div>
<div class="">
<div class="">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.</div>
<div class=""><br class="">
</div>
<div class="">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.<br class="">
</div>
<div class=""><br class="">
</div>
<div class="">Particularly, bits like:</div>
<div class=""><br class="">
</div>
<div style="margin-left:40px" class="">Where
you are invited to submit any contribution
to <a href="http://erlangforums.com/"
moz-do-not-send="true" class="">erlangforums.com</a>
(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 <a
href="http://erlangforums.com/"
moz-do-not-send="true" class="">erlangforums.com</a>,
you: ...</div>
<div style="margin-left:40px" class=""><br
class="">
</div>
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.</div>
<div class=""><br class="">
</div>
<div class="">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: <a
href="https://policies.google.com/terms"
moz-do-not-send="true"
class="moz-txt-link-freetext">https://policies.google.com/terms</a>
, specifically the section "Permission to
use content" which similarly contains a
"non-exclusive, worldwide, royalty-free"
license to anything that gets posted there.</div>
<div class=""><br class="">
</div>
<div class="">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.<br class="">
</div>
<div class=""><br class="">
</div>
<div class="">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.<br
class="">
</div>
<div class=""> </div>
</div>
</div>
</blockquote>
<br class="">
<pre class="moz-signature" cols="72">--
============================================================
Ivan A. Uemlianin PhD
Llaisdy
Ymchwil a Datblygu Technoleg Lleferydd
Speech Technology Research and Development
<a class="moz-txt-link-abbreviated moz-txt-link-freetext" href="mailto:ivan@llaisdy.com" moz-do-not-send="true">ivan@llaisdy.com</a>
@llaisdy
<a href="http://llaisdy.wordpress.com" class="" moz-do-not-send="true">llaisdy.wordpress.com</a>
<a href="http://github.com/llaisdy" class="" moz-do-not-send="true">github.com/llaisdy</a>
<a class="moz-txt-link-abbreviated" href="http://www.linkedin.com/in/ivanuemlianin" moz-do-not-send="true">www.linkedin.com/in/ivanuemlianin</a>
festina lente
============================================================</pre>
</div>
</div>
</blockquote>
</div>
<br class="">
</div>
</div>
</div>
</blockquote>
<br>
<pre class="moz-signature" cols="72">--
============================================================
Ivan A. Uemlianin PhD
Llaisdy
Ymchwil a Datblygu Technoleg Lleferydd
Speech Technology Research and Development
<a class="moz-txt-link-abbreviated" href="mailto:ivan@llaisdy.com">ivan@llaisdy.com</a>
@llaisdy
llaisdy.wordpress.com
github.com/llaisdy
<a class="moz-txt-link-abbreviated" href="http://www.linkedin.com/in/ivanuemlianin">www.linkedin.com/in/ivanuemlianin</a>
festina lente
============================================================</pre>
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