Erlang forums (was Re: PING TEST)

[Richard O'Keefe]

I'm not speaking for anyone else,
but I *did* try the forum when this thread came along,
and strongly disliked it.
Not the people who set it up or run it, obviously,
It was the "user experience".
I should note that while I have been registered with StackOverflow
for years, I *never* turn to it for anything unless or until it
turns up in a web search.
Fortunately, mailing list archives also turn up in web searches,
and for my interests, are usually more helpful.

I would hope and expect that a forum would be indexed on the
*content* of postings, not (or not only) on titles.  I used to
co-teach a graduate-level Information Retrieval course, and
one of the things we taught was the relative uselessness of
titles.  (Here in my hand is a book on 'Quantum Computation'.
Should I file it under Computers, or Physics?  Or maybe, just
maybe, under Cryptography?  Here's one on "Earth Crust Slippage".
Surely that goes under Geology?  Nope: Crackpotism.)  Having a
state-of-the-art (e.g., JASS) open source search engine as a
primary navigation tool is essential for a forum, because any
other organisation scheme is CERTAIN to be ineffective or worse
for some users.  (Me, as it happens.)


On Fri, 17 Dec 2021 at 14:40, Contact | Erlang Forums <
contact@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, 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>
> wrote:
>
>> > On Dec 15, 2021, at 10:27 AM, Contact | Erlang Forums <
>> 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 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
>> 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
> (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, 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 , 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
>                         @llaisdy
>                          llaisdy.wordpress.com
>               github.com/llaisdy
>                      www.linkedin.com/in/ivanuemlianin
>
>                         festina lente
> ============================================================
>
>
>
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