Re: New Boost website ready for launch

From: Joaquin M López Muñoz (joaquinlopezmunoz_at_[hidden])
Date: 2024-07-02 18:10:33

El 18/06/2024 a las 15:23, Phil Endecott via Boost escribió:
> [...]
>
> I continue to find the "terms of use" page problematic. If you want to 
> have a
> "legally binding agreement" between you and casual site visitors, then 
> at the
> very least that needs to be a full-screen popup that everyone has to 
> see and click
> "agree" on before they can view the site. Content in a link at the 
> bottom of the
> page that the user hasn't clicked on cannot possibly establish a 
> contract.
>
> You say that "this website ... provided under the terms of the Boost 
> Software
> License". Is that in addition to these terms of use? I.e. if I 
> disagree with the
> terms of use, can I choose to use it under the terms of the BSL 
> instead? If
> that's not what you mean - then what does that bit mean?
>
>> IF YOU DO NOT AGREE WITH ALL OF THESE LEGAL TERMS, THEN YOU ARE
>> EXPRESSLY PROHIBITED FROM USING THE SERVICES AND YOU MUST DISCONTINUE
>> USE IMMEDIATELY.
>
> Noted. 

Hi Phil, thanks for your feedback, this is a discussion of the points 
you raised:

Legally binding agreement

As a matter of fact, using a service implies abiding by its terms of use 
via the
so-called "implicit consent" provision. Let me give you an example that 
is similar
in some respects to ours: wikipedia.org. There are three types of users 
there:

* Read-only users (the majority): these can access the site without 
explicitily
accepting the terms of use, yet these terms exist:

 Â Â Â  https://foundation.wikimedia.org/wiki/Policy:Terms_of_Use

* Non-registered contributing users: one can for instance initiate a 
talk on some
article without registering. Right at the bottom of the "Add topic" 
button there
is some legalese explaining that clicking that button implies accepting the
terms of use.
* Registered users: these provide an (optional) email address, go 
through the
usual validation mail etc. Curiously enough, explicit acceptance of the 
terms
of use is not required anywhere in the process.

Now, in the (proposed) new Boost website we have two types of users:

* Non-registered users: these are expected to be the majority, at least 
initially.
Non-registered users have effectively read-only access to the site, so 
the terms
for them are extremely lenient in that they focus on scenarios beyond their
interaction capabilities. In this case, we have opted for doing as Wikipedia
(and others) do, and provide the terms of use without requiring explicit 
consent.
* Registered users: these can interact with the site by providing personal
information in their profile section and proposing entries to the news 
section
(in the future, their interaction capabilities will expand). Currently 
they are not
requested to accept the terms of use as part of their registation, but I 
filed a ticket
so that this is fixed.

-----

"If you do not agree with all of these legal terms, you are expressely 
prohibited..."

For its own protection and that of other users, any service provider 
must be able
to deny (or at least prohibit) access to malicious users (like, for 
instance, those
posting illegal content), so, yes, this must be present. Again, 
non-registered users
can hardly break the terms of use because they can only read information.
Anyway, the message is a bit hostile and I've toned it down a bit 
following the
example of usingstdcpp.org (see below).

-----

Terms of use and licensing terms

These are separate topics. There are different components to be 
discussed here:

* The site itself, i.e. a web server and associated infrastructure run 
by the
service provider.
* The information displayed by the site:
 Â  * Text and images on the site itself (BSL licensed, repo 
boostorg/website-v2).
 Â  * Documents on the "Learn" section (BSL licensed, repo 
boostorg/website-v2-docs).
 Â  * Documentation from Boost libraries (BSL licensed, each on its own 
repo).
 Â  * Links to Boost source code (BSL licensed, each on its own repo).
 Â  * Links to external sites
 Â  * Content contributed by users (e.g. news entries). These are hosted 
on the site
 Â  backend.
* The source code of the site (BSL licensed, repo boostorg/website-v2).

Now, the terms of use refer to what users are allowed to do when interacting
with the site. All the content they access (trough the site or some 
other way) is
subject to its corresponding license that governs what users can do with 
it (copying,
distributing, modifying, etc.) So, fo instance, a user can enter the 
site (and implicitly
accept the terms of use), download some docs (which are BSL), stop using 
the service
(thus not being bound by the terms of use any longer) and use the 
downloaded content
as they please (subject to the corresponding license). I hope this 
clarifies the situation.

There's a category of information without an explicitly assigned 
license, namely
"Content contributed by users". For this we are requiring (by virtue of 
their mere
posting) that we are granted a license to copy, distribute the content , 
etc. --otherwise
we couldn't even show the contribution on the site.

I've reworded some sections of the Terms of Use so that the points you 
raised
are hopefully more clear:

https://docs.google.com/document/d/16SNasomozyvBosnv6K5Ufe2_3-3cyrlw0m6fDtRcC-8/edit?usp=sharing

It'd be great if you (and others) can take a look and report back.

Best,

Joaquín M López Muñoz