My Heroic and Lazy Stand Against IFTTT

I imagine they're more than happy to maintain their Twitter recipe themselves and it's probably only the smaller services they're punting the work to

If you are a self-respecting programmer, you should ask yourself if someone has done a better job writing the same tool than you intend to do.

Isn't much of the legal stuff just a way to cover their tails?

For example, the bit about owning content. Do they really want your content? Is content on the internet worth anything these days? If your content is worth something, it's likely the Google ranking which gives it value rather than the content itself.

I imagine that's just an attempt to keep people from suing over reproducing content to go over the pipes.

PEDRAGOSA V. GOOGLE SPAIN, S.L. - Google got sued for reproducing content in various ways in search results. The case went in Google's favor but the legal costs for this sort of thing is probably a killer for services which don't have that GOOG ticker symbol.

The "no competition" bit seems like it's meant to keep people from using IFTTT developer tools as part of their own competing service.

Why bother reading the legal stuff? It likely won't ever come up to affect you. There is some risk, but the opportunity cost of taking the time to go through it is probably greater. I imagine most of the world population doesn't have the comprehension ability to understand what they are reading anyways. You might as well just stop using the internet rather than trying to make sense of the legal stuff.

If memory serves that's pretty much how pinboard.in got launched into the air a few years back, so it'd certainly be poetic. Nice of you to pass it on :)

> Isn't much of the legal stuff just a way to cover their tails?

Sure, but most of it puts your tail on the line instead. They've decided that they somehow have enough power to make you do their job, and make sure you do it in a way that protects their legal interests over yours. You'd be a fool to agree to it.

> Do they really want your content?

Yes. Their lawyer told them that it was a good idea to make sure their license agreement gave them (and I quote) all right, title, and interest (section 3) to any materials displayed or performed on the Service (definition of "Content" in section 1). They thought it was a good idea to follow said lawyers advice, because it was easier for them if they could just do whatever they wanted with your content. So, yes, they want it. That's probably not because they want to run off with it, but because it's easier (for them) that way and they don't care about you. It's much easier for a business to evolve and grow when they know that they can just do whatever they feel like and don't have to stick within the narrow terms of an existing agreement. Open "give me all your stuff" agreements are much simpler to use.

> Why bother reading the legal stuff?

Because they could be bothered writing it, so they obviously think it's important. And it gives them all the rights that they could possibly want for nothing in return.

If it's not important, then it didn't need to exist in the first place. If it needs to exist, then it's worth reading.

We're not talking about a simple end-user here, this is Maciej's company and full time job, and IFTTT seems to want to use this license for B2B integrations. Crazy!