SourceForge Terms of Service Change, Users Unhappy

An email fluttering around a few mailing lists has been submitted in various forms here today. It's about changes to the SourceForge terms of service. Some relevant links unclude the old terms, new terms, old privacy statement, new privacy statement and contact for "questions or concerns" (Patrick McGovern, Site Director). Obviously since SF is owned by the same parent company as Slashdot, I'm biased and corrupt and you should ignore my opinions on the subject, but while I don't particularly like this any more then anyone else, I also don't think it's the huge deal that others are making of it. Especially considering projects aren't paying for the free service. You get what you pay for after all. I have attached a summary to this article of the changes that are being called into question if you don't want to do a mental diff on the links above.

This list was submitted by a few different users and was apparently originally posted to several mailing lists, although I don't know who actually originally wrote it. I just quote it here for reference.

1. They can henceforth change the terms without notice, just by posting the new terms on the website. (Currently they are obliged to give 15 days notice by email, a period that we are currently in for this change.)
2. They can henceforth remove user accounts without giving a reason. (Currently they are obliged to have a reason, though the set of acceptable reasons is open-ended.)
3. They're no longer obliged to make the contents of a deleted account available to its owner. (There was previously a "reasonable effort" clause to that effect.)
4. They're no longer obliged to provide notice of changes to the privacy policy, unless the changes are "substantive". (Currently they are obliged to provide notice of any change.)
5. The privacy policy is acquiring a disclaimer that amounts to "this is not true". It actually disclaims the entire privacy policy.

Comments

Whoa, hang on a second...

[jargonCCNA]

1. They can henceforth change the terms without notice, just by posting the new terms on the website. (Currently they are obliged to give 15 days notice by email, a period that we are currently in for this change.)

I was never informed about these changes... And I have two running projects on SF.

Fuckers. I'm gonna write to write them a nasty email about that.

This is very bad

[Animats]

The only reason for doing this would be because some big change is planned, like claiming ownership rights of all code posted.

Note that this follows a previous removal of the tools needed to copy an entire project from SourceForge and move it elsewhere. It's not impossible to do that, but it takes more work now.

So, if your project is important, get it off SourceForge now, before it's too late.

Re:hmm

[jo42]

Punch the little f'agit the wrote this forkin' software. Please.

Re:Why isn't everyone kicking CmdrTaco's ASS?

[ahde]

charities could use a little suffering. It might put them more in touch with those they are claiming to help.

Re:Sourceforge.net not a viable business

[ahde]

Web hosting is not expensive!

At least not on linux with free software. Storage is practically free. One banner ad probably pays enough for all the hard drives they've used to date.

They did develop a webapp, which probably cost something, and if improved will cost a little more, but its not that hard to do. Ask most anyone who reads slashdot.

A competent sysadmin might set them back a little, but a competent sysadmin wouldn't need to spend all his time working on sourceforge if he didn't have to upload new policies all the time

Bandwidth is their major expense. Everyone cries about the cost of bandwidth these days, but bandwidth is only getting cheaper. Companies are just getting greedy. A dedicated T-3 only costs about $10,000 a month.