wandb forbids reusing the models and other information, independently of their usage, so they should find another source for their models
EDIT: as I am being accused of inventing it I will quote the terms of agreement and license, since maybe its own founder seems to not have read it or someone without training on how to write proper terms and agreements made it for them and the restrictive usage of "Material" does apply to its hosted software.
Note that there is no formal definition of "Materials" or "Service", so that it applies to all the contents of the webpage including the software stored there:
https://wandb.ai/site/terms
I quote it:
2. Use License Whether you are accessing the Services for personal, non-commercial transitory viewing only (our free license for individuals only), for academic use, or for commercial purposes (our subscription package for businesses), permission is granted to temporarily download one copy of the information or software (the “Materials”) from our website. This is the grant of a license, not a transfer of title, and under this license, you may not: a. Modify or copy the Materials; b. Use the Materials for any commercial purpose, or for any public display (commercial or non-commercial); c. Attempt to decompile or reverse engineer any software contained in the Materials; d. Remove any copyright or other proprietary notations from the Materials; or e. Transfer the Materials to another person or "mirror" the Materials on any other server. This license shall automatically terminate if you violate any of these restrictions and may be terminated by us at any time. Upon terminating your viewing of these materials or upon the termination of this license, you must destroy any downloaded materials in your possession whether in electronic or printed format. f. Utilize our personal license for individuals for commercial purposes and any such use of our personal license for commercial purposes (e.g. using your corporate email) may result in immediate termination of your license.
Founder of Weights & Biases here (wandb). We don’t forbid anything, models are property of the people who created them.
Why do you think that?
EDIT: I'll edit respond, since you did. Look at sections 3b and 3c in the terms, they cover Models and other user content specifically. Those are user property, not our property. But I can see how this is confusing. We will clarify it.
Did you write your own terms of agreement rather than a lawyer? I signed up today and that was explicitly written in the license agreement, point 2. Note that there is no formal definition of "Materials" or "Service", so that it applies to all the contents of the webpage including the software stored there, and as soon as anything is ambiguous the interpretation is free (or random).
2. Use License
Whether you are accessing the Services for personal, non-commercial transitory
viewing only (our free license for individuals only), for academic use, or for commercial purposes (our subscription package for businesses), permission is granted to temporarily download one copy of the information or software (the “Materials”) from our website. This is the grant of a license, not a transfer of title, and under this license, you may not:
a. Modify or copy the Materials;
b. Use the Materials for any commercial purpose, or for any public display (commercial or non-commercial);
c. Attempt to decompile or reverse engineer any software contained in the Materials;
d. Remove any copyright or other proprietary notations from the Materials; or
e. Transfer the Materials to another person or "mirror" the Materials on any other server.
This license shall automatically terminate if you violate any of these restrictions and may be terminated by us at any time. Upon terminating your viewing of these materials or upon the termination of this license, you must destroy any downloaded materials in your possession whether in electronic or printed format.
f. Utilize our personal license for individuals for commercial purposes and any such use of our personal license for commercial purposes (e.g. using your corporate email) may result in immediate termination of your license.
I am certainly not a lawyer, however, 3b and 3c (from the terms link you posted) state that user content, including specifically Models, are property of the user.
Are you saying you think there is a conflict between 2 and 3b, 3c, or did you miss section 3?
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3. Intellectual Property & Subscriber Content
a. All right, title, and interest in and to the Services, the Platform, the Usage Data, the Aggregate Data, and the Customizations, including all modifications, improvements, adaptations, enhancements, or translations made thereto, and all proprietary rights therein, will be and remain the sole and exclusive property of us and our licensors.
b. All right, title, and interest in and to the Subscriber Content, including all modifications, improvements, adaptations, enhancements, or translations made thereto, and all proprietary rights therein, will be and remain Subscriber’s sole and exclusive property, other than rights granted to us to enable (i) Subscriber to process its data on the Platform, and (ii) us to aggregate and anonymize Subscriber Content solely to improve Subscriber's user experience.
c. Subscriber Content means any data, media, and other materials that Subscriber and its Authorized Users submit to the Platform pursuant to this Agreement, including, without limitation, all Models and Projects, and any and all reproductions, visualizations, analyses, automations, scales, and other reports output by the Platform based on such Models and Projects.
```
Sorry Slewis, I cannot reply to your other comment with another subcomment.
This is an ambiguation and it is an issue that as founder you should address as it could be interpreted as a self contradictory agreement and then invalidate part of the agreement (as I've seen with non formal open source licenses, ill formed patents which became bypassed, etc).
A way to solve that might be using a glossary of what do you mean by each term, however I do recommend you to use a lawyer for such things as this sort of mistakes might become expensive later on.
Go buy a copy of https://www.survivingiso9001.com/ [No affiliation] for your lawyers. Not directly for the subject matter, but as a cautionary tale about consequences of word choice.
Please abstain yourself of writing any sort of derogatory comment without provide any constructive argument to the conversation, and just downvote the comment, or even better: follow how the conversation follows.
I also recommend you to read the guidelines on how to post in the HN community, check the section regarding how and what to comment in the link here:
EDIT: as I am being accused of inventing it I will quote the terms of agreement and license, since maybe its own founder seems to not have read it or someone without training on how to write proper terms and agreements made it for them and the restrictive usage of "Material" does apply to its hosted software.
Note that there is no formal definition of "Materials" or "Service", so that it applies to all the contents of the webpage including the software stored there: https://wandb.ai/site/terms
I quote it:
2. Use License Whether you are accessing the Services for personal, non-commercial transitory viewing only (our free license for individuals only), for academic use, or for commercial purposes (our subscription package for businesses), permission is granted to temporarily download one copy of the information or software (the “Materials”) from our website. This is the grant of a license, not a transfer of title, and under this license, you may not: a. Modify or copy the Materials; b. Use the Materials for any commercial purpose, or for any public display (commercial or non-commercial); c. Attempt to decompile or reverse engineer any software contained in the Materials; d. Remove any copyright or other proprietary notations from the Materials; or e. Transfer the Materials to another person or "mirror" the Materials on any other server. This license shall automatically terminate if you violate any of these restrictions and may be terminated by us at any time. Upon terminating your viewing of these materials or upon the termination of this license, you must destroy any downloaded materials in your possession whether in electronic or printed format. f. Utilize our personal license for individuals for commercial purposes and any such use of our personal license for commercial purposes (e.g. using your corporate email) may result in immediate termination of your license.