Who needs a EULA if nobody reads it?

UPDATE: As of May 1, 2021 Bintray services will no longer be available (ConanCenter and JCenter are not affected) for more information read the Centers Deprecation Blog

As long as you’re distributing public open source software, you don’t need a EULA. Just choose from the over 100 open source licenses Bintray offers to get the level of protection you want. Once you move to distributing commercial software, you need a EULA. This is the contract that you make with all of your users when they download your software from Bintray. Without a EULA, you’re exposing yourself to lawsuits and unmitigated copying and redistribution.

Now, we’ve all seen EULAs. Whether they’re entitled “Terms of Service”, “Terms and Conditions”, or “Here’s what you can and can’t do with my software”, essentially, they are the same. They usually pop up early on in the installation sequence of any new piece of commercial software we install. And I can tell you, with 5-nines of certainty that most of us just click “Next” without reading them, and complete the installation. But there is a breed of people who actually DO read EULAs. They are usually sequestered in some corporate enclave, and it’s their job to make sure that the company they represent can accept the contractual obligations you set forth in your EULA. Yes, these are the company lawyers. Without their “OK”, your potential enterprise customers will not use your software.

Now, as smart as lawyers may be (or not), if your EULA is hidden somewhere deep under /etc/this/that/and/the/other, it’s going to be difficult to find. There’s no reason to make this difficult. Bintray gives you an easy way to expose your EULA through Products.

Bintray Products and EULAs

Say you developed your “packageOfTheCentury”, and, naturally, you want to offer it to developers on different platforms. I.e., you might have your debianPackageOfTheCentury, nugetPackageOfTheCenutury, npmPackageOfTheCentury…and so on. Since all these packages represent the same product, just for different packaging formats, you will want to apply the same EULA to all of them. This is where Bintray Products come into play. Products are available with a Gold or Enterprise account, and let you collect all the packages under one roof as a single coherent offering, making it easy for you to manage. It’s also easier for potential users to find your single product rather than searching for all its components separately, and any update you make to any of the constituent packages in your product is automatically reflected as a new version of the product itself. But the biggest benefit is that you only need to assign a single EULA to your product, and it applies to all of its constituent packages. And the beauty of it is that your EULA protects your product, for both authenticated and anonymous users, before it’s even downloaded, rather than being embedded inside the packages. That also means that it’s easy to update online as any of the constituent packages are updated with new versions. 

Creating a Product is easy.

And once your product is created, and you’ve entered its basic details, it’s easy to add packages to it.

You don’t even have to change your product’s version manually; it is automatically derived by Bintray any time the version of one its constituent packages changes. And if you really want to, you can assign a different EULA to different versions of your product as needed.You don’t even have to change your product’s version manually; it is automatically derived by Bintray any time the version of one its constituent packages changes. And if you really want to, you can assign a different EULA to different versions of your product as needed.

All About Bintray EULAs

With a Bintray Enterprise account, you can manage all of your EULAs in one place and set a default EULA to be assigned to all new versions of this product that are created.

You can create a new EULA at any time using Asciidoc, Markdown or free text.

And once you have a EULA assigned to your product, if anyone (even an anonymous user) tries to download a file from one of the packages in your product, they will have to accept your EULA first. In fact, the download URL provided by Bintray for any of the packages in your product will first pop up the EULA and require the user to accept before proceeding with download. That means you can provide a EULA-protected download link from any other app. Just hover over the package in your download list to see it.

Why don’t you try this one to see how it works. Here’s what you should see.

By collecting the different packages you are offering under a single product, governed by a single EULA, you’re protecting your interests, making things simpler, and reducing your (and your customers’) legal costs. Can you think of any better way to protect your IP and keep both your lawyers and your customers happy?

Read all about managing products and EULAs.