Licenses Over Data: A Case Study with Github v BitBucket

IANAL but this doesn&#x27;t seem unreasonable. The exact clause is:<p><i></i>End User hereby grants Atlassian a non-exclusive license to copy, distribute, perform, display, store, modify, and otherwise use End User Data in connection with operating the Hosted Services.<i></i><p>For me, the key is &quot;in connection with operating the Hosting Service&quot;. They will need to do things with your data as they move it between servers and storage and make it available to you. If you want it displayed publicly then you need to have given them a license to do so.

In my experience, the vast majority of developers completely ignore&#x2F;misunderstand licensing most&#x2F;all of the time.<p>The common excuse is that the intent by publishing source code online is that you clearly are allowing everybody to use it freely as they wish. I have no doubt the licenses on Bitbucket are not followed correctly more often than not.<p>Atlassian, if you&#x27;ve followed them, have always been a very transparent, developer-centric company, the behaviour of neither the founders, nor the company has ever suggested they are in the slightest bit interested in being arseholes in the manner being suggested here.<p>Yet somehow there&#x27;s a switch from &#x27;intent&#x27; to being licensing experts when it suits.

From github&#x27;s Terms of service : &quot;You understand that the technical processing and transmission of the Service, including your Content, may be transfered unencrypted and involve (a) transmissions over various networks; and (b) changes to conform and adapt to technical requirements of connecting networks or devices.&quot;<p>In other words, the end user grants github a license to copy, distribute, store, modify End User Data (without encryption even if the user marked this data private).

&gt; End User hereby grants Atlassian a non-exclusive license<p>The title of this post needs to be changed to reflect the title of the post. Right now it&#x27;s disingenuous link bait.

At Assembla, a project management tool that incorporates a repository service like github or bitbucket, we have a similar TOS as github:<p>&quot;1. Assembla claims no copyright or other ownership rights in the Content you upload to the Service. 2. By uploading or otherwise providing Content to Assembla.com, You grant to Assembla a non-exclusive, royalty-free, paid-up right and license to use, reproduce, display and distribute such Content on Assembla.com in connection Assembla&#x27;s provision of the Services to such persons as you may authorize. 3. You hereby represent and warrant that you have all intellectual property and other rights necessary concerning any Content posted by You on Assembla.com.&quot; <a href="https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.assembla.com&#x2F;terms_of_service" rel="nofollow">https:&#x2F;&#x2F;www.assembla.com&#x2F;terms_of_service</a><p>We do not want your data for our personal or corporate uses, we only want to display&#x2F;reproduce&#x2F;use your data with your expressed permission, i.e. you make your data public - the same as github.<p>The theory we have at Assembla is that the data is yours, always yours. We will never keep your data from you and we will never claim ownership over it.<p>We explicitly state that we do not own your IP because in today&#x27;s world so many services are taking ownership over what you create. We feel it important to tell you right out that we do not claim ownership because if we do not, you will not know our stance.<p>Our stance is that we want you to feel comfortable using our service for both private and public projects for your data. We want you to be successful with a nice tool, we do not want to own your data.

A service does need the right to store, process and display your data, and if their service makes use of third-parties then they need to assert the right to work with third parties.<p>That said, it would be comforting if Atlassian clarified this to make it clear they have zero claims on anybody&#x27;s IP.

<i>&quot;courts have ruled that “in connection with” covers indirect connection as well as direct connection.&quot;</i><p>Which courts?<p>The question matters because while Github is located in San Francisco, Atlassian is an Australian company.

It&#x27;s github&#x27;s TOS that seems flawed to me, not Atlassian&#x27;s. Maybe some jerk-off will sue Github because it&#x27;s making &quot;copies&quot; of copyrighted coded without a license. I am more worried about that outcome than Atlassian going tyrannical.

Why does any service need to assertively state they don&#x27;t own your IP? They don&#x27;t own your IP. And can&#x27;t claim it. Whether they mention it or not doesn&#x27;t change that fact.

I&#x27;d be surprised if Atlassian inserted that phrase out of malice. I&#x27;ve been told by lawyers more than once that &quot;it&#x27;s necessary to prevent someone from suing you for doing exactly what they asked you to do&quot;. (display content they uploaded)<p>The lawyers also use it for covering all their bases. By uploading, do you automatically give them the right to feature your repo on their homepage? Or is that advertising?

C&#x27;mon, Atlassian is not evil, they just want to avoid being sued.<p>I think that end-user agreements must be prohibited altogether, because it is a mean of discrimination. Either you provide a public service and then your relationships with users are guided by the state law, or you sign an exclusive contract out of public service. The main obstacle to that is the retarded US law system.