I am using the great snap “zoom” made by @ogra based on the .deb package hosted in zoom servers… Is legal to distribute software made by zoom in snap format?
What say the store rules?
I am asking because, inspired by ogra, after a couple of hours I snapped the free version of softmaker office, freeoffice. I have a first version working and now I am concerned about distribution. I read the eula of freeoffice:
YOU MAY:
Install and use one copy of the Software on up to 3 (three) computers that belong to the same family household or on 1 (one) computer that belongs to an organization;
Make a reasonable number of backup copies for archive purposes, so long as the backup copies are not distributed; and
Transfer the usage rights in the Software on a permanent basis to another person or entity, provided that you retain no copies of the Software and the transferee agrees to the terms of this agreement.
YOU MAY NOT:
Make copies of the accompanying documentation;
Sublicense, rent or lease any portion of the Software or accompanying documentation; or
Reverse-engineer, decompile, disassemble, modify, translate, make any attempt to discover the source code of the Software, or create derivative works of the Software.
I think there is no problem for distribute it. What do you think? Is there a potential problem?
Those terms seem to make it pretty clear you can’t redistribute it. Your only distribution rights come from point (3), which only allows you to distribute it to one other person if you also delete all copies you hold at the same time. That’s not at all like what would happen if you published it to the store.
You could try contacting the developers and asking for permission to package and publish it.
I was thinking like this. But my english is not the best
I made the snap as an learning exercise. But I was thinking: What happens if I (or other) publish this snap anyway? The store banish me? or the store waits until SoftMaker makes a claim?
I will contact them… I do think they will answer, but nothing is lost.
Your obligations under the Snap Store’s developer agreement include not publishing any software you do not have a right to distribute. See Section 2 (d) of the following:
And according to section 10, Canonical has the right to terminate your developer account for such a breach. So please don’t publish it to the store.
One thing you can do though is publish your packaging of their software. That is, a git repository containing the snapcraft.yaml file plus any other scripts you used, but not the software itself. This would let someone build a snap from the copy of the application they downloaded. And if you do get permission to redistribute the software, it will be pretty easy to prepare a snap to publish.
An alternative that works around the redistribution clause is to do what we have been doing for some WINE-based snaps of proprietary software. We create the snap package with everything that is needed to run the app except the app itself. Then when the user installs the snap we have a script that downloads the official release package from the vendor directly. That way we are not distributing the software, merely a simple way to install the software.
The caveat is the software needs to be accessible via an open direct download, and not behind a registration or payment page.
It should check every time if freeoffice is installed and if not, warn the user, show the terms of the page of the page, and download it. But this gets me other question: Is possible to install a deb inside an installed snap? (freeoffice is offered a deb)
