[Beowulf] Anaconda distribution sowing FUD to generate sales?

[Guy Coates]

If you want a drop in replacement,  you can use conda-forge which pulls
from  un-encumbered, non-Anaconda repositories.

https://conda-forge.org/

(and once you've switched, you can also get the benefit of mamba, which is
conda with passively improved performance).
https://github.com/mamba-org/mamba

Thanks,
Guy

On Wed, 13 Apr 2022 at 17:11, Prentice Bisbal via Beowulf <
beowulf at beowulf.org> 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) 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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-- 
Dr. Guy Coates
+44(0)7801 710224
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