On 4/13/22 12:57 PM, Joe Landman wrote:

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.

You mean like when conda sits there for 15-20 minutes and then finally comes to live only to tell you it can't solve an environment? Never happens. ;)


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.

I get they need to make money. I just don't like when companies decide they're going to make money off of open-source software and then when their original business model fails they change models. I'm all for supporting open-source, and I've worked at several companies that really supported supporting open-source, either by allowing employees to develop for open-source projects as part of their job, or paying for support contracts that we might not really need just to support the open-source product. I'm more bothered by the how rather than the what or why in this case.


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


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Prentice

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