[Beowulf] Anaconda distribution sowing FUD to generate sales?

[Joe Landman]

I've got general negative thoughts about conda, based upon $dayjob's use 
of it.  I always enjoy trying to build something which depends upon a 
conda-ized library which has been pooly built/packaged ... yeah, good times.


As for their bait and switch, they do need to cover network costs, and 
if they are making the mistake of using cloud storage for this, then 
their egress/storage costs are likely significant. If you have to use 
them, and really have no choice in the matter, it is better to support 
them and enable them to stay in business, than let them whither and 
die.  The latter guarantees some future flag days where you have to 
start switching out quickly.


Hence a point about a plan B ...


On 4/13/22 12:11, Prentice Bisbal via Beowulf wrote:
>
> Recently, one of my users go this e-mail from a commercial account rep 
> at anaconda.com:
>
>> Hi [User]
>> I'm reaching out because I've noticed we are one of [Employer's 
>> Name]'s preferred tools and also to offer guidance in navigating our 
>> new Anaconda Terms of Service, as there are changes for the 
>> commercial use of Anaconda. Based off my research, [Employer's 
>> Name]is mirroring quite a few packages in the past few months.
>>
>> We remain deeply dedicated to OSS, and that cost is funded by the 
>> long tail of our enterprise products and users. In short, we changed 
>> our Terms of Service to prohibit commercial use of our Public Facing 
>> Repo (repo.anaconda.com <http://repo.anaconda.com>) channel without a 
>> paid license.
>>
>> We'd like to discuss how your organization can remain compliant and 
>> discuss some options moving forward.
>> Are you or someone in your IT department available to chat? Book time 
>> with me [link to online scheduling service 
>> removed]<https://anaconda.getoutreach.com/c/Cody_Foxwell>
>> Cheers,
>> [salesperson's name]
>>
> Have any of you received an e-mail like this?
>
> Since I work at an academic, government research site, I don't think 
> we fall into the commercial category, so I'm pretty sure we're safe, 
> but I still don't like this attempt to monetize open-source software 
> like this. I'm not an open-source zealot like RMS, but I don't like 
> when people take open-source software, try to monetize it it like this.
>
> What's interesting is their approach here - they are not trying to 
> keep open-source software from your directly - they're saying you 
> can't use their *repo* to get that software. So you can have your 
> open-source software, but to get it from the dealer to your house, you 
> need to pay a toll to use the roads.
>
> I don't like this because many people now rely on conda, and conda 
> only has value because of the repo. If people using conda knew that 
> this might be a problem, perhaps they would have stuck with the 
> python.org distribution of Python and pip.
>
> The other think I don't like, is that you can't find any of this 
> information on the anaconda.com website. Even after knowing these 
> terms and conditions applied, I couldn't find any warnings about this 
> on the product pages for the Anaconda Distribution. It's as if they're 
> deliberately hiding this information from potential downloaders of 
> Anaconda. I only found it by going directly to 
> https://repo.anaconda.com, where they do have links prominently 
> displayed.
>
> This seems like a trap to me. You download anaconda, completely 
> unaware of these terms and conditions, and then use conda to install 
> the packages you need, unknowingly violating their license..
>
> Your thoughts?
>
> Prentice
>
>
> -- 
> Prentice
>
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-- 
Joe Landman
e:joe.landman at gmail.com
t: @hpcjoe
w:https://scalability.org
g:https://github.com/joelandman
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