Personal Use In Business Environment

[A3414896]

I was going to use BTSync to sync files between my corporate notebook and desktop. But I've read http://www.bittorrent.com/legal/eula, and it says it's only for personal non-commercial use. But different companies threat this term differently.

 

TeamViewer, for example, does not allow using its product for free in any commercial network, even in a cafe, school or via other public wi-fi (even from private notebook!). And they say same words in EULA: only personal non-commercial blah blah.

 

What about BitTorrent Sync?

Which of the following won't breach EULA?

 

1. Sync my (owned by me) notebook with my home PC over free wifi in an cafe.

2. Sync my notebook with my home PC in office of my organization, over my org's network

3. Sync my computer (home PC/my notebook) with corporate computer, where I'm the only user

4. Sync my computer with corporate workstation, where other users can log in (non simultaneously)

5. Sync corporate notebook with corporate computer, if I'm only user on both

6. Sync corporate computer, where I'm the only user, with corporate workstation, where other user can log on too (again, non simultaneously: only one user can work there in any given moment)

7. Sync with corporate terminal server, where I can log on simultaneously with other users

 

I'm not asking about any services involving money. And all this is only for my personal convenience, and synced files are not for other users.

 

And one more case:

 

8. Sync files on my corporate computer, where I'm the only user, with my colleague's corporate computer, where he/she is only user.

 

Only for convenience, again, and neither I nor my colleague receive any payments or bonus neither for this setup, nor for transferring the files.

(in fact, some of these can breach corporate security policies, but this is another question, and not for this forum)

 

 

P.S. I've sent this question to legal@bittorrent.com a week ago, and got no responce.

Edited May 6, 2014 by A3414896

[GreatMarko]

The current offering of Sync is designed primarily for personal use.

 

Also, do bear in mind that Sync is still in "beta", and therefore you may be unwise to deploy "beta" software in a production/business/enterprise environment.

 

However, an "Enterprise" edition of Sync is in development, which sounds more suited to your needs - find out more here.

[A3414896]

Does that mean that, before connecting to a public Wi-Fi, I shall shutdown BTSync?

 

 

Otherwise, it's "personal", as in <http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/personal>, terms 2 and 5, and even 4 for most of cases listed in 1st post (up to 8th).

 

See, there are interpretations allowing "Personal" use in business environments: http://www.dafont.com/forum/read/17192-1/what-is-considered-personal-use-and-what-is-commercial

 

This is what my question was about.

 

Personal and Business aren't mutually exclusive. Add non-profit to that.

 

What I am going to sync is not any business-critical, and, most of it, isn't strictly corporate, data. For business data, we've got corporate solution, but it's not allowed to put any non-business data in that storage.

 

That's why I need something side-by-side. Let's say, it's funny pictures. Currenly I'm using unison, but it's too complex to connect when behind NAT.

 

P.S. I doubt there will ever be funding for something like enterprise BTSync in my company.

Edited April 3, 2014 by A3414896

[A3414896]

So, have anyone got any certain answer?

Meanwhile I've filled the form, but got nothing in return. And still did not get any response from legal@bittorrent.com.

 

In Russia, anti-software-piracy laws are crucial, they can jail for years (up to 25) without any legal owners' statement.

It's up to user to prove it has a license (it's usually resolved by bribes, but prices are high).

[RomanZ]

@A3414896

 

I'm working to find out a precise answer for you. Will contact you soon.

[Jonnan001]

I confess, with the blog advertising examples of it being used in an enterprise environment, it hadn't actually crossed my mind to look at the EULA like I should. I'd like to use it to distribute simple autohotkey scripts that we need to keep consistent across various PC's (Helpdesk Templates mostly).

But if this isn't licensed for commercial use, someone might want to mention that to your blogmeister - it's certainly being advertised as such -- last time I checked, Angie's List was not a charity --> http://blog.bittorrent.com/2014/03/06/sync-hacks-how-angies-list-reduced-their-web-deployment-time-to-seconds/

[A3414896]

 http://blog.bittorrent.com/2014/03/06/sync-hacks-how-angies-list-reduced-their-web-deployment-time-to-seconds/

From what I've read, they're using BitTorrent Sync API.

 

It's licensed for commercial use, though

From http://www.bittorrent.com/legal/terms-syncapi:

 

While this license currently includes commercial use, except as set forth in Sections 7 and 8 and subject to the Terms hereunder, this is likely change in the future.

 

So either Angie’s List wishing a lawsuit, or they've got killswitch for license-change-case and rushing another sync method to migrate on "in future" (or will just draw back to old method when terms will change).

[A3414896]

This is two months since my initial query. Seems that BitTorrent either can't say anything good, or didn't yet determined this for themselves That's quite sorry,

And there are good news also: meanwhile, there is an alternative – syncthing. And it has BSD-like license.

[A3414896]

BUMP.

 

I still hope for the answer, though in Russia we've got saying "Обещанного три года ждут" (roughly translates to "If something promised, wait three years", though there's better explanation)

[RomanZ]

@A3414896,

 

Sorry for delay. Here is the answer to your question.

 

- The term "Personal use" is not related to the equipment used to run BTSync, but more to the purpose.
- If you transfer your personal data - it is personal. If you use it to transfer your company data, or use BTSync to improve your job effectiveness, it is going to be a enterprise use, not a personal.

 

As they say in Russia, "И года не прошло"

Please note, if you need any more clarifications - legal questions always take a while.

[A3414896]

RomanZ, Thanks!

 

@Jonnan001, it seems you're out of luck. You're definitely wanted to use BitTorrent Sync for with commercial purpose. Get something else.

 

Though, if all your teammates are on LAN, there are no any problems at all.

 

And if not, I suggest you go github with gitextensions, which is much more appropriate for shared AutoHotkey scripts development. Scripts are tiny anyway.

[GreatMarko]

@Jonnan001, it seems you're out of luck. You're definitely wanted to use BitTorrent Sync for with commercial purpose. Get something else.

 

...or wait for Sync Enterprise!

[A3414896]

 

...or wait for Sync Enterprise!

a-ha, if you're really, really unhurried. Because months can pass.

Also, we don't yet know how much it will cost!

[Journeyman]

- The term "Personal use" is not related to the equipment used to run BTSync, but more to the purpose.

- If you transfer your personal data - it is personal. If you use it to transfer your company data, or use BTSync to improve your job effectiveness, it is going to be a enterprise use, not a personal.

 

I don't mean to be disrespectful, but if this is true, then the promo video at Bittorrent.com/sync is a little deceptive.  In the video, he seems to be promoting the use of BTsync in a business environment as he shares his works with a client. 

 

Along the same lines, if i was a self-employed farmer with all of my accounting information in my office pc, would it be a violation of the terms of use to use BTSync to sync my Quickbooks data with my other office in my vacation home across the state?  What if it wasn't a computer across the state but instead, across the same office?  From what I gather, both cases wouldn't be permitted.  Correct?

[Guest proactiveservices]

Two more posts by BitTorrent Staff that are confusing and contradicting what we've been told about "business" use:

 

This survey , conducted by BitTorrent Staff asks if the user has synced work documents, code or creative files using BitTorrent Sync. No I haven't done this yet - we have been told this is not permitted under EULA.

 

In this thread a user has come up with yet another good use case for BT Sync. Their clever idea was praised by BitTorrent Staff, but my interpretation of the EULA - and the clarification in this thread - is that their great idea is prohibited by the EULA.

 

I don't want to come across as being picky or petulant. I'm keen to start offering BT Sync to my customers and to use it for my own business data, but I can't because I'm not permitted to...or are we? :-(

[RomanZ]

all,

 

Sorry for confusion. I'm working with legal department to clarify the usage. Will update as soon as have answer.

[spYro]

I would love to get an answer to that too.

About a year ago, i wrote to the legal-team of Bittorrent, regarding the EULA of utorrent.

I wrote them, that we are a company and want to know about using utorrent in our company for free.

The answer was, that we can't BUT she wrote me about Bittorrentsync and if that maybe would be intreesting for us.

I looked into it and it wasn't interesting to that time.

Things have changed and now we want to try and use it.

 

Since she knew about our will to use it in a company and still mentioned it, so we can use it, would tell me, it is allowed in company usage.

 

We are working to implement and test with it at the moment, but if it isnt allowed (for free) in our company, please tell it fast. Then we will just look for an alternative that is free in business-usage.

 

Thanks in advance

spYro

 

edit:

I just saw this link here (http://www.heise.de/download/bittorrent-sync-1191510.html). There it says its free (for companies too, "Preis: Kostenlos"). Otherwise there would be "kostenlos (nur für den privaten Gebrauch)".

So it seems that also other sites are praising it as completely free. One reason more for clarification

[Journeyman]

all,

 

Sorry for confusion. I'm working with legal department to clarify the usage. Will update as soon as have answer.

Has there been any new information from the legal department regarding this issue?  It's been a while since we heard from you on this.

[RomanZ]

@Journeyman

 

It is in progress, I expect it to be complete around 1..2 weeks from now.

[cadillacace]

RomanZ, 

 

Any word on this? 

[Journeyman]

Suppose you could put some pressure on those guys?  They're really draggin their feet on this one (since mid-June it seems) and clarification is very important to some of us here.

[Guest proactiveservices]

Some of us have just gone with SyncThing or other equivalents. My customers have needs and I am now very uncomfortable with the fact this deal-breaking question has dragged on for so long. Who knows what other legal bombshells await us?

[SQRT]

It looks like the Sync EULA was updated August 26, 2014. http://www.bittorrent.com/legal/eula-sync

 

"Subject to your compliance with these terms and conditions, BitTorrent, Inc. grants you a personal, freely revocable, limited, royalty-free, non-exclusive, non-transferable, non-sublicensable, non-assignable license to use the Software, solely for your personal, non-commercial purposes, except that you may also use the Software for internal use as an end user if you are a business. BitTorrent, Inc. reserves all rights in the Software not expressly granted to you here."

 

Emphasis mine. Don't know what it said before, but it now appears to explicitly allow internal use in a commercial setting. Don't try to resell it or package it with your own product, in other words. Which would appear to be in line with the sync hacks they've blogged about.

[A3414896]

That's great. Sad it took so long.

Also, it seems they have changed URLs of that license, now it's separate from μTorrent's one.

 

@SQRT, btw, where did you get that URL?

[RomanZ]

Dear community members,

 

I apologize it took that long to cover the question. But now EULA allows business use explicitly.