Software Architecture is a 162 pages course book on, you guessed it, software architecture. The book, which is a contribution to the Open University Netherlands (OUNL) to the Free Technology Academy is released under a Creative Commons Attribute ShareAlike License and downloadable for free and without any registration, from the URL above.
The LinuxQuestions.org website Tradepub, a partner of LinuxQuestions.org (which is just one of the many partners of Tradepub, and is mentioned here because it is the website from which I and others arrived to the Tradepub pages shown here: please note their URL, the logo in the top left corner of the first one and above all the explanations from LinuxQuestions in the comments!) has a page devoted to this very book that says (see screenshot 1):
Receive Your Complimentary Guide NOW! "Software Architecture" This guide will introduce you to the world of Software Architecture. ... Offered Free by: Free Technology Academy (FTA) Other Resources from: Free Technology Academy (FTA)
(none of the mentions of FTA in that page is a link to the FTA website)
clicking on the Request Now button brings you to a separate page (see screenshot 2) that:
- starts with “Request your Free Guide!”
- then asks for your name, job title, business email address, phone number and other personal information
- because (emphasis mine) “Complete and verifiable information is required in order to receive this offer”
all this, to get the address of somebody else’s public Web page, from which you can download somebody else’s free book without passing any personal information. Uh???
Giving for granted that an “offer” with that kind of attached requests and assertions is legal where that company is registered, here’s why I’m telling you this story:
- personal curiosity: is this legal everywhere? It may very well be, for all I know. Just curious, really! Opinions from lawyers and privacy experts worldwide are very welcome!
- public service to all Web surfers (since similar things also happen for OpenOffice/ LibreOffice and probably for thousands of other products): whenever you find free offers like these, please remember to check (by entering the name of the product in any search engine) if what you’re trying to get isn’t legally available anywhere else at less invasive conditions
Disclaimer: I came to know this story because I offered to be a tutor for the FTA courses and, as a consequence, subscribed to their mailing list to closely follow the FTA activities.
I was just wondering the same question myself.
If the idea of “attribution” is interpreted in a very narrow sense, I’d say no. But a wider interpretation would allow this. I don’t see any harm in allowing the wider interpretation.
I’m not sure the lawyers would even have a definitive answer to this. Perhaps the solution is to start demanding more than a reference to a name, and wait to see if anyone wants to try and set a precedent.
Perhaps that page did some sort of prerequisite signup? Because, when I tried to download the PDF from the first-linked page, it returned a 403: Forbidden.
sorry, which page? The one at ftacademy.org, https://ftacademy.org/materials/fsm/11#1 ? I downloaded the PDF book from there without any problem.
Your link worked fine for me. Thanks.
“sorry, which page? The one at ftacademy.org, https://ftacademy.org/materials/fsm/11#1 ? I downloaded the PDF book from there without any problem.”
Not me…
403 Forbidden
You don’t have permission to access /files/materials/pod/fta-m11-soft_arch-
pre-pod.pdf on this server.
heck, you’re right. I get the same error now. But yesterday it worked, I do have the file on my computer. Thanks, I’ll inform the FTA list about this.
Hi Marco,
that’s an interesting question indeed. I think it is legal, as they just announce the existence of a certain material. And if you cooperate to hand in your personal details, they provide you with the direct links. Hopefully however not too many people cooperate, and are smart enough to use a search engine to get to the book.
Bill is right about that the PDF is not available at the FTA site right now. We’ll need to get that one back up! I will have a look at the FTA server what’s wrong with that file.
cheers,
Wouter
Somehow I am not surprised that they are using entrapment techniques like this. I originally subscribed to LinuxQuestions a couple of years ago, and have been getting their newsletters regularly. Most of them are just begging people to submit answers to the many unanswered questions on the site. But after reading this article, I tried to go back and un-subscribe. That was not an option on any page that I looked at. I sent them an email asking them to remove me from their list and database because I cannot condone their use of this tactic, which I consider to be unethical, if it is even legal.
Bob,
the “cannot unsubscribe” part is quite interesting. Wasn’t there anything in the subscription form that mentioned this?
In any case, have you tried submitting this issue to any combination of, say, Lxer.com, linuxtoday, linux weekly news, slashdot, os news etc…? If they ran such a story it may cause enough noise to make them change.
Marco
A couple points of clarification from LQ (happy to answer any additional questions).
1) There is a link to unsubscribe from any mailing we ever send. I believe Bob wants to delete his account. That is a manual request.
2) The link you posted is to TradePub, not LQ. They are a 3rd party partner. We do not get access to any of the information they ask for, nor do we ever ask for identifying information at LQ itself. They ask for that information in return for the PDF download, which to my understanding is a program that organizations such as FTA have to explicitly participate in. We (LQ) are also happy to send the direct link to those who don’t want to give that information, if they ask.
Just a suggestion, but simply asking someone at LQ for clarification would have probably been helpful before posting this. If you look at TradePub, many sites aside from us partner with them.
–jeremy
Thanks for the clarification, especially the note about the difference between tradepub and LQ. I am correcting the text to reflect this, and I apologize to you and all readers, because this difference _had_ been mentioned in the FTA mailing list. I don’t know why I didn’t see it, since (see end of the comment) my only purpose is to raise awareness about certain practices, not to run campaigns against _any_ specific company.
However, as far as I know, FTA never requested to participate. I wrote this post exactly because people on the FTA list complained about what was happening.
Besides, with respect to this:
We (LQ) are also happy to send the direct link to those who don’t want to give that information, if they ask.
The complaints mentioned above started from people who arrived to pages like those in my screenshots straight from LQ pages, in which there was nothing like “if you want the direct link without answering any question, here it is”
Finally, I started from this practical example only to wonder about a general point/practice, on which I felt important to raise a bit more awareness.
Thanks,
Marco
While I think “demand” is a bit strong, since participation is clearly voluntary, if the FTA wasn’t aware this was happening with their content (or worse, are aware and doesn’t want it happening) then that’s certainly something we’d have an issue with. Have you tried contacting TradePub? If you have and they haven’t been responsive, let me know and I’ll try to get you in touch with someone.
–jeremy
“Demand” is what the tradepub website does in order to pass people that link, as shown in the screenshot.
That is, if you want to get that link from them (and they don’t mention that there are other ways, nor do the LQ pages I’ve seen that link to tradepub) you HAVE to give them that information. This is what I mean.
wrt “Have you tried contacting TradePub?”:
Personally, I haven’t tried to, because I was mainly interested to know if, in general, the basic practice, regardless of which company does it, is actually legal in all countries. Therefore, I thought not really useful/necessary to contact tradepub.
I do not know if FTA already did, but I have already posted on their mailing list that you stepped in the discussion, to clarify things and offer to help. I’m sure they will get back to continue the discussion
We have tried, though I don’t think that anyone has actually contacted LQ. I wrote to the FTA discussion list with the following suggestion:
I agree that Linux Questions has now gone a bit too far. Has anyone
protested? They have been offering Linux Basics with no repercussions for a
while. If someone contacted them now and asked them to stop, they might well do so. Perhaps those of you who are up in arms could do so. You might be
surprised.
Wouter subsequently said:
Below a message I have once sent to some guy from TradePub. Never got an
answer from him.
—————————————————————————-
Dear Sanjay,
several people have brought it to our attention that you are promoting
our work at the Free Technology Academy. Though we appreciate that, we
observe also some forms of “opaque copying” which doesn’t seem to be in
line with the free licenses under which we have published these
materials or in any case not desirable. Let me explain in a bit more detail.
First of all, with the Free Technology Academy we have started an
international educational initiative to conduct online courses about
Free Software and Open Standards (that together can be called as “Free
Technology”).
Second, as part of our commitment to Free Technology and Free Knowledge
in general, we produce, use and publish only course books that are under
a free license. Even more so we publish them openly, so no registration
is required to access them, and in open standard formats, so no user is
forced to use a particular software application to read or use the
books. (note here, that – apart from publication in PDF and SCORM
format, we’re in the process to make them available also in DocBook, in
order to provide a more editable format). Find all currently published
FTA books here: http://ftacademy.org/materials .
Third, these free licenses are in this case the GNU Free Documentation
License (GNU FDL), and in some cases also a second one, the Creative
Commons Attribute ShareAlike license (CC BY-SA). The GNU FDL, as you may
know, gives the user all the four freedoms (use, study and adapt, copy
and share, and distribute modified versions. It also requires any user
who decides to republish these works to pass on these freedoms (the so
called “copyleft clause”), and provide access to the source. In case you
would decide to publish an “opaque copy”, you are required to at least
provide “.. in or with each Opaque copy a computer-network location from
which the general network-using public has access to download using
public-standard network protocols a complete Transparent copy of the
Document, ..”. I quote here from the GNU FDL, see:
http://www.gnu.org/copyleft/fdl.html
Now, as far as I can see it, you didn’t actually publish a copy (though
I haven’t entered my personal data in your forms to find out for
myself), but you made available a link. We could call this an “opaque
link”. In the case of links, it might be arguable whether your actions
are illegal or not. Nevertheless, it would be recommendable that you
publish the direct link to the course books before urging people to
exchange their personal data. You might still be able to convince people
to register their data, for example to receive updates. In any case:
that’s your business and not mine.
I look forward to your reply and changes in the publication.
best regards,
Wouter Tebbens
Founding director of the Free Technology Academy
http://ftacademy.org/
With respect to: “I agree that Linux Questions has now gone a bit too far. Has anyone protested? They have been offering Linux Basics with no repercussions for a while.”
Once again, *we* are not offering anything, but simply linking to a 3rd party partner. If that partner is in fact doing something dubious, we’re quite interested in ensuring that activity stops or is corrected.
Do you have any idea when that correspondence was sent? I’m not familiar with the particular employee mentioned, but I’ll try to touch base with my contact and see what information I can get.
–jeremy
Once again, *we* are not offering anything, but simply linking to a 3rd party partner
Jeremy,
I believe this is clear now, and I have changed the post text accordingly. Lisi’s comment, however, is a “copy and paste” of two different email messages. The first is what Lisi wrote to the FTA list before I had written this post and before he, me and others had realized that it was not LQ asking for those data. He pasted it as is just for reference, not because he still thinks it’s LQ that is collecting data.
The second part of Lisi’s comment is an email that one of the officials of FTA had sent to Tradepub, not LQ because he had realized from the beginning who was actually doing the questions. So as far as I see from Lisi’s comment, the reason why FTA had not contacted LQ before may be that they (unlike me and others) had understood immediately that the data collector was somebody else.
However, the reason why many people (including me, sorry!) are initially confused and get angry at LQ instead of Tradepub is evident in the first screenshot attached to the post. Colors, layout and logo are those of LQ, not somebody else. This, and the fact that the LQ pages containing the links to Tradepub ones don’t have a notice like “click here to go to a partner website which is not LQ” is what creates the confusion.
Update: the Free Technology Academy has published a formal request to TradePub to correct inappropriate use of FTA course books