
Never ever write software for Oculus - rmi_
https://medium.com/@pragu/never-ever-write-software-for-oculus-9587266a979f
======
hoechst
It's easy to get mad about stuff you don't understand, read or research
correctly.

It even states that "In the event you are a developer who submits User Content
to Oculus, you acknowledge and agree that our agreements with you as a
developer may supersede this section of the Terms."

In any case, this section of the ToS is not even about Software, but about
User Content. There's a "Developer Distribution Agreement" for that:
[https://share.oculus.com/developer-distribution-
agreement](https://share.oculus.com/developer-distribution-agreement)

Quote: "You grant to Oculus a nonexclusive, worldwide, and royalty-free
license to: copy, perform, display, and use the Products for administrative
and demonstration purposes in connection with the operation and marketing of
the Store and to use the Products to make improvements to the Store, Rift, and
any other Oculus products and services."

Valves Steam Distribution Agreement looks similar (if
[http://stuff.danbo.vg/sda.html](http://stuff.danbo.vg/sda.html) is to be
believed): "Company hereby grants to Valve a non-exclusive license to
reproduce, publicly display and perform, transmit, sell, license and otherwise
distribute the Applications in object code form via Steam and through any type
of payment method to Steam Account Owners in the Territory."

Not trying to defend any companies here. Those terms might as well be shitty.
I don't know, I'm not a jurist or anything. But at least get the facts right.

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FussyZeus
Nothing seems especially horrible here, they're basically saying that if you
submit things to their distribution network (whatever it is, I honestly have
no idea) that they can then distribute it worldwide. A little strange that
they don't allow you to terminate it at some point but that's probably to
ensure growth of whatever this Store thing is going to be.

But I mean, no one had a gun to your head about writing Oculus software
anyway, so...

~~~
eterm
Among other rights it includes the right to "adapt" (i.e. modify), so it isn't
just about distribution rights.

~~~
onion2k
In the case of software content, that would include automatically recompiling
the content that you upload to a new target format in the future, so if Oculus
develop a new way of deploying content in 5 years time they won't have to bin
everything people have uploaded. It's not really any different to Youtube
asking for a license to transcode video content in to new formats.

They could ask only for the right to do that sort of thing, but a more broad
language covers things no one will have thought of. It's not (necessarily)
evil.

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threeseed
This is really one of the worst submissions I've seen in the many years I've
been on here. It offers no cogent, insightful argument why as a developer I
should be afraid nor anything particularly useful other than give up the
opportunity to develop for a lucrative, ground breaking platform. Brilliant.

And as a developer surely this person would understand why this clause is
necessary. Because when a user uploads a photo to a service they will use it,
copy it, adapt it (e.g. re-encode, make thumbnail), display it and distribute
it (e.g. to CDNs). All of which needs a sublicense in order to do.

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TazeTSchnitzel
Huh? This paragraph

> By submitting User Content through the Services, you grant Oculus a
> worldwide, irrevocable, perpetual (i.e. lasting forever), non-exclusive,
> transferable, royalty-free and fully sublicensable (i.e. we can grant this
> right to others) right to use, copy, display, store, adapt, publicly perform
> and distribute such User Content in connection with the Services

is pretty much standard in terms of service for virtually any type of online
service or, well, anything which involves user-created content. They're not
asking for control over your work, they just want to be sure you can't sue
them for copyright violation simply by virtue of you using their service and
them distributing your content for you.

It's legal boilerplate and should not be worrying. Read the ToS of your
favourite social media service, it probably has the same paragraph near-
verbatim.

\----

If you don't believe me, look at the individual provisions, they're quite
reasonable:

“worldwide” – Oculus want to be sure that they're able to distribute your
content in not just your home country, but all regions they're distributing it
in.

“irrevocable” – Oculus do not want you to be able to revoke their ability to
legally distribute your content while they're still doing so. This doesn't
mean they won't give you the option to stop doing so.

“perpetual” – Likewise, it would be problematic for Oculus if in a year's time
they could no longer legally distribute your content. Again, if you wish to
stop distributing it, you can ask them to.

“non-exclusive” – You're not giving up your rights to let other people
distribute the same content.

“transferable” – Oculus themselves might be distributing the content, but what
if they later merge with another company? In which case, they need to be able
to transfer the license.

“royalty-free” – Oculus do not want to have to pay you for every single time
they make a copy of your content. This doesn't mean they won't pay you if
people, say, buy your game.

“fully sublicensable” – Oculus, in the course of distributing your content,
might use other services (for example, Amazon AWS). In the course of doing so,
they need to be able to extend this license to them.

“use, copy, display, store, adapt, publicly perform and distribute such User
Content in connection with the Services” – Covers every possible use they can
think of, because laws may consider each of these to be different.

The reason they ask for this license is because otherwise there's only an
implicit one, and being outright about it saves them potential legal
headaches. Each of these provisions is not necessarily implied in an implicit
license grant. It's an unlimited do-anything license because that covers every
possible use-case.

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rmi_
Reddit discussion:
[https://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/4dafji/never_e...](https://www.reddit.com/r/programming/comments/4dafji/never_ever_write_software_for_oculus/)

Most noteable:

> If the Terms Of Service didn't make you feel uneasy, try this one:
> [https://www.oculus.com/en-us/legal/privacy-
> policy/](https://www.oculus.com/en-us/legal/privacy-policy/)

~~~
brador
There's also the huge discussion about the Oculus "malware" that pings and
listens to Facebook servers every X seconds and has full admin rights on the
users machine:
[https://www.reddit.com/r/oculus/comments/4da3r5/oculus_home_...](https://www.reddit.com/r/oculus/comments/4da3r5/oculus_home_network_traffic_detailed_analysis/)

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owenwil
Better stop using Facebook/Twitter/et al then

~~~
bcg1
Some of us don't use those things to begin with.

~~~
JabavuAdams
That's fine, but the article makes it seem that this is some kind of out-of-
the-ordinary agreement. It's fine if you're opposed to such agreements as a
matter of principle. It's just strange to single out Oculus for this. It's as
though the original poster has never actually read a ToS document before.

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JabavuAdams
I went to scroll down ... and nothing. What? Where's the content?

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edoceo
Posting was removed

